CPU Usage Staying at 50%+ and more

[spoonboy]

You sound savvy enough to have treid the msconfig route, but if not try it and comb out as much unneeded stuff as possible. I'd also try a bios update. It really isnt that hard. If your lucky you can do it using a usb stick, or if not go and find yourself a fresh unused floppy, as an old dusty one from the bottom of the cupboard is a bit risky for that kind of thing. Try restroing all bios settings to default, take off any overclocks and update and reinstall all drivers for everything, gpu, motherboard, soundcard, monitor, everything. Try getting your machine as much into a 'vanilla' state as possible, and see where you can go from there.

 

[evongugg]

Pictures of CPU-Z at any moment should be fine.

 

[tamalero]

dont forget to download AMD's dual core optimizer, and Windows XP's dual core fix
thats a must for gamers + dual core
and seems indeed a weird bug betwen the USB hub and your drivers.

 

[the yeti]

ILL TELL YA WHAT THE PROB IS!

did you check task manager?? look at svchost.exe...

if that is the cpu hogger than you either are downloading updates from microsoft... check for the installer yellow shield on bottom right coner of screen... or a virus downloader.

Tell me what is the .EXE file that is hogging?!??!

 

[foskey]

Going to go out on a limb here and say it is my motherboard and ram that have been making this problem happen. I took one 1gb stick out last night and didn't have any problems for the few hours that I was playing my games.Although I noticed my system was a bit slower because of only having a 1gb stick in, what I am thinking is that there is something bugged with when I try and dual channel my ram. I am also testing tonight with 2gb (single channeled).

I didn't have the xp dual core fix, but just got that installed as well so I'll see if I notice an improvement performance wise.

edit - going to add all the cpuz images, big post

Both sticks have the same stats, they are in slots #2 and #3 to avoid dual channeling for now
the ram mobo slots go 1&2 yellow then 3&4 red.

 

[foskey]

Been thinking about this since my computer has been running fine the past 2 days using 1 stick yesterday, and single channeling today and not seeing any problems.

Would flashing my bios (seen above on cpu-z as updated on 12/2006) help at all? I would like to try and see if it solves any problems or adds improvements, just that I am not quite sure about doing that on a whim since I heard it's rough sometimes flashing the bios.

 

[evongugg]

Flashing the Bios is easy. Use a bootable floppy. You can get it at:

http://www.bootdisk.com

I don't think that flashing is going to solve your problem. I think you should test the memory modules with memtest86+.

 

[qmalik]

Flashing the Bios is easy. Use a bootable floppy. You can get it at:

http://www.bootdisk.com

I don't think that flashing is going to solve your problem. I think you should test the memory modules with memtest86+.

I totally agree...i personal would NOT flash bios - unless you had done it before or was with someone that has, it can really mess you up if you do it wrong. Run a program called memtest86+ to see if you RAM is defective - that would be a better idea.

 

[foskey]

Heh, I'll update what I've done so far today in order
-Ran 5 passes of memtest86+ with no errors (ram was single channeled)
-Flashed my bios (old version was from 12/2006, now running one from 7/2007)
-Changed ram back to dual channel setup, will see from playing tonight if it acts up.

Also wondering if an option in my bios called M.I.T. (Motherboard Intelligent Tweaker) called Robust Graphics Booster would increase the performance noticeably on my graphics card. Currently set on auto but it has a fast and turbo setting, but that question is just outta curiosity.

Other than that, it looks like the problem has been shaven down to how my motherboard is acting towards dual channeling.. I'll post back up tonight to see if perhaps the flashing solved anything since memtest showed no errors