On Sun, 24 Oct 2004 22:07:03 -0700, Benjamin Marmot <Benjamin
On a system that I am trying to debug, when I am in the windows task
manager's "performance" tab, or in the performance section of the
adminstrative tools, I see oscillations in cpu usage from 0 to ~60% with a
frequency on the order of 1 second. However, in the "processes" tab of the
task manager, the cpu usage of the "system idle process" never drops below
80%.
This is in Windows XP Home.
The reason why I am investigating this system is because playing sound is
very choppy -- the breaks in the audio track roughly correspond to these
peaks in reported cpu usage, and disabling virtually all user-variable
services using the services.msc control panel does not affect the breaks in
playback, nor does increasing the priority of the application that is
generating sound.
Benjamin,
If you want to know more about the processes running on your computer, get
Process Explorer (free) from
<
http://www.sysinternals.com/ntw2k/freeware/procexp.shtml>. Provides way more
information than Task Manager. You can look at any process and see what modules
it contains, and who wrote or distributed each module. And graph its memory and
CPU usage. And Process Explorer can provide a different counter ("Context
Switches"), that's a more detailed metric than the CPU usage counter, which may
identify the process causing your problem.
You might want to check for spyware causing the problem too.
Start by downloading each of the following additional free tools:
AdAware <
http://www.lavasoftusa.com/>
CWShredder <
http://www.majorgeeks.com/download4086.html>
CoolWWWSearch.SmartSearch (v1/v2) MiniRemoval
<
http://www.majorgeeks.com/download4113.html>
HijackThis <
http://www.majorgeeks.com/download.php?det=3155>
LSP-Fix and WinsockXPFix <
http://www.cexx.org/lspfix.htm>
Spybot S&D <
http://www.safer-networking.org/index.php?page=download>
Stinger <
http://us.mcafee.com/virusInfo/default.asp?id=stinger>
Create a separate folder for HijackThis, such as C:\HijackThis - copy the
downloaded file there. AdAware, CWShredder, and Spybot S&D have install
routines - run them. The other downloaded programs can be copied into, and run
from, any convenient folder.
First, run Stinger. Have it remove any problems found.
Next, close all Internet Explorer and Outlook windows, and run
CoolWWWSearch.SmartSearchMiniRemoval, then CWShredder. Have the latter fix all
problems found.
Next, run AdAware. First update it ("Check for updates now"), configure for
full scan (<
http://forums.spywareinfo.com/index.php?showtopic=11150>), then
scan. When scanning finishes, remove all Critical Objects found.
Next, run Spybot S&D. First update it ("Search for updates"), then run a scan
("Check for problems"). Trust Spybot, and delete everything ("Fix Problems")
that is displayed in Red.
Then, run HijackThis ("Scan"). Do NOT make any changes immediately. Save the
HJT Log.
<
http://forums.spywareinfo.com/index.php?showtopic=227>
<
http://forums.spywareinfo.com/index.php?showtopic=11150>
Finally, have your HJT log interpreted by experts at one or more of the
following security forums (and please post a link to your forum posts, here):
Aumha: <
http://forum.aumha.org/index.php>
Net-Integration: <
http://forums.net-integration.net/>
Spyware Info: <
http://forums.spywareinfo.com/>
Spyware Warrior: <
http://spywarewarrior.com/index.php>
Tom Coyote: <
http://forums.tomcoyote.org/>
If removal of any spyware affects your ability to access the internet (some
spyware builds itself into the network software, and its removal may damage your
network), run LSP-Fix and / or WinsockXPFIx.
Cheers,
Chuck
Paranoia comes from experience - and is not necessarily a bad thing.
