PCU Usage hovering around 25% please help

[Fletch206]

I have a very fast custom built PC with 8 GIGS of RAM however sometimes my CPU usage starts hovering around 25% even though there are no processes using memory in task manager. This is causing a problem when I try and play games it makes the games lag really bad. It seems like this happens randomly and usually goes away when I restart but now the restart doesn't work.. it's still doing it.

I'm using Windows Vista Ultimate 64bit

I can't for the life of me find out what's causing this lag... it doesn't look like my AVG is running anything either.

 

[cjl]

Look in task manager to find out what is using the CPU time. Make sure you have the "show processes from all users" box checked.

 

[Fletch206]

Like I said... I've looked through task manager already and there is nothing that jumps over 2% and yes it's showing all processes from all users.

 

[p05esto]

You've got some software conflicting, I'm pretty sure. Could also be a bad driver. I had that happen to me a few years ago as well and couldn't positively figure it out either. But I seem to recall uninstalling software until I found the conflict and CPU went back down. (but I don't remember for sure)

 

[leo2kp]

You can sort your process by %CPU usage. If you have 4 processes at 2% each, there is your 8%. Just do it and find out where it's going. Then determine if you need those processes.

 

[Scotteq]

Download and run Process Explorer - It's basically Task manager on Steroids.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896653.aspx

It *will* tell you what processes are using what resources.

 

[Fletch206]

Thanks for the link Scotte