XP system hangs, with "system" using near 100% CPU

[Wolfgang]

Hardware/software:
Laptop, XP with Servicepack 1 and all patches installed

Occasionally my laptop gets into a state where it is "almost" hung,
responding incredibly slowly. Looking at the task manager, I see the
system running at near 100% - it shows up as a red line in the
Performance Tab, so that's not the System Idle Proceess.
THe only remedy for getting out of this state is power cycling, as the
start button doesn't reply, either.

What is it doing? Does anyone out there know what this is about, or
how I could go about diagnosing it?

Thanks,
Wolfgang
California

 

[Tara K.]

Hardware/software:
Laptop, XP with Servicepack 1 and all patches installed

Occasionally my laptop gets into a state where it is "almost" hung,
responding incredibly slowly. Looking at the task manager, I see the
system running at near 100% - it shows up as a red line in the
Performance Tab, so that's not the System Idle Proceess.
THe only remedy for getting out of this state is power cycling, as the
start button doesn't reply, either.

What is it doing? Does anyone out there know what this is about, or
how I could go about diagnosing it?

I don't know if this is your particular problem, but I've almost always
found this symptom to be due to a virus infection. See if you can boot into
safe mode and run a scan.

Hope this is what it is, and hope this helps.

TK