Whats my processor doing ?

[Guest]

Hi
My processor is busy beavering away, and I have no clue to what its actually
doing.
Is there a simple way of knowing what program is running, the task manager
does not help or give any clues. I have tried whats running, but this gives
me an endless list, prseumable created from the start program.
The sound from the processor would suggest a defragmentation program was
running, whilst I have O&O defragmentation it is not scheduled to run at this
time either by me setting a time or default.
Is there a simple utility programe which will give me the names of programes
actually running ? my operatingI system is windows XP SP2
Thanks Joco (London)

 

[Daniel Crichton]

Joco wrote on Tue, 19 Jun 2007 03:48:01 -0700:

Hi
My processor is busy beavering away, and I have no clue to what its
actually doing.
Is there a simple way of knowing what program is running, the task manager
does not help or give any clues. I have tried whats running, but this
gives me an endless list, prseumable created from the start program.
The sound from the processor would suggest a defragmentation program was
running, whilst I have O&O defragmentation it is not scheduled to run at
this time either by me setting a time or default.
Is there a simple utility programe which will give me the names of
programes actually running ? my operatingI system is windows XP SP2
Thanks Joco (London)

Processors do not make a noise. That will be your hard disk.

It could just be an issue with fragmentation on the drive, especially if you
paging file is fragmented as when you have a lot of programs running chunks
of memory will be swapped out to disk into the paging file.

To see what's running, bring up Task Manager (right click on the taskbar and
choose Task Manager). Look for any programs with high CPU or memory usage.

You might want to run some malware scans (such as Spybot Destroyer and
Ad-Aware) and see what turns up.

It's also possible that your hard drive is on it's way out, I'd suggest
backing up anything you want to keep just in case. While I might be wrong,
there's nothing worse than having the hard drive suddenly break down due to
a mechanical failure and finding you'll have to pay through the nose to get
a data recovery company to get back files that you haven't backed up and
really need.

Dan

 

[Guest]

Daniel hi and thanks for your reply.
I have a WD 500GB My Book Premium 1C external drive which I use for backing
up my PC and Laptop.
I have already tried the Task Manager, that did not help.
I have installed and run reguarly "Windows Defender", "NoAdware",
"RegistryFix", and "Regseeker", however I will try the software you mentioned
(Spybot Destroyer and Ad-Aware)
Once again thanks for your assistance
Joco (London)

 

[Gerry]

Download Process Explorer.

For further information about Process Explorer see here:
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/sysinternals/SystemInformation/ProcessExplorer.mspx

To ascertain which service is causing the problem select the image
producing the high CPU usage, right click, select Properties,
Services. Note there are the full names and some explanation of what
each service does.

You will find further information on Services here:
http://majorgeeks.com/page.php?id=12

To trace the particular Service involved you need to turn off each
service in turn and then restore it noting what effect it has on CPU
usage. However, you need to take care and watch what other Services
are dependent on that service. When you click on the Dependencies
tab allow it a little time to display the information.



--

Hope this helps.

Gerry
~~~~
FCA
Stourport, England

Enquire, plan and execute
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

[Guest]

Gerry Hi
Thanks for the info, I will try your suggestions,

Joco (London)

 

[C.Joseph Drayton]

Daniel hi and thanks for your reply.
I have a WD 500GB My Book Premium 1C external drive which I use for backing
up my PC and Laptop.
I have already tried the Task Manager, that did not help.
I have installed and run reguarly "Windows Defender", "NoAdware",
"RegistryFix", and "Regseeker", however I will try the software you mentioned
(Spybot Destroyer and Ad-Aware)
Once again thanks for your assistance
Joco (London)

Hi Joco,

Both TaskManager and What's Running will answer your
question. I think the problem may be that you don't
understand 'what' the answer means.

In simplest terms, when you are not running any
applications, you may think that the computer is not doing
anything. In reality, it is doing quite a few things. That
is why you see that long list in What's Running. Just
waiting for the 'user' to tell the machine to do something
is doing something. If you have an Internet connection, than
the computer has to be in contact with the network. If you
are listening to music, the computer is reading the mp3 and
playing it. Your screen is being refreshed (even though you
haven't made any changes).

One of the things that you will notice in TaskManager is
that there are a couple of different tabs. The
'Applications' tab tells you what applications you are
running. If you click on the 'Processes' tab, you will see
all the things your computer is doing in the background. If
you have a lot of processes running, even though no
applications are running, you can be using the CPU and hard
disk.

Unfortunately these days, quite a few programs will install
processes without the user even knowing it. All the user
knows is that over a period of time there computer seems to
have gotten slower. Because I do a lot of software testing,
I try to check my computer at least once a month to see what
is actually going on, on my computer.

Not only does some software install processes, some
ill-behaved ones when you uninstall them don't remove
everything they installed.

If you are in the habit of downloading shareware & freeware,
that threat of 'unmentioned' processes increases.

Ciao . . . C.Joseph

"A promise is nothing more than an attempt,
to respond to an unreasonable request."

 

[Plato]

The sound from the processor would suggest a defragmentation program was
running, whilst I have O&O defragmentation it is not scheduled to run at this
time either by me setting a time or default.

The CPU does not make any noise. The sound you are hearing is from one
or more of your hard drives working away doing whatever they have been
told to do by your OS or any third party programs you have running 24/7.