Retro PIII Experiment Build 100% CPU Issue.

[PinchedNerve]

Retro PIII Experiment Build 100% CPU Issue.

Hello. Long story short, I sold a D-top & a L-top to a older couple. They had a PC that I got their files off of & they gave me their old PC (PIII). I wanted it to tech my 12 year old boys to build, install, & experiment on so they don't mess up their gaming rigs.

My Issue.
Took all the parts out of the old HP case & bought a cheap standard case. I monitored & instructed one son on his first build & reformat (Monday Night). The problem is, its a brand new format of XP & the CPU runs at 100%, 100% of the time. I've never seen this before.

I pulled out the modem & SB live card, no difference. I know the 2 RAM sticks were miss matched, 1 was 100 Mhz the other 133 Mhz so I pulled the 100 Mhz out, no difference. The only thing left is the HD which is just a regular PATA drive, the DVD player, also a PATA drive, the network card, and a TNT 2.

When my son installed XP all devices installed & didn't need any drivers. Now I'm not saying there isn't any better drivers, but windows didn't report any issues. The CPU running at full bore 100% of the time makes doing anything else a real time consuming b!tch.

Anyone have any idea? I'm about to pull the 133 RAM stick & try just the 100 but after that I think I'm stumped. Never seen a brand new install pin the cpu at 100%, 100% of the time.

Edit: Network card does work but like I said, doing anything like just checking for driver updates is a real b!tch when the CPU is pinned at 100%.

Edit again: Also, the Process running at max is one of the svchost.exe.

 

[ddpruitt]

If it's svchost that means a background process is sucking up 100% of the CPU. Is this a clean install or have you installed something else that might be doing something in the background. Is the system acting laggy? It might be a missing or improper drivers making the system think it's at 100% when it isn't, remember these older machines may need MB specific drivers.

+1 for the retro build, cool idea

 

[bjaminnyc]

Here's a description on likely how to solve your problem.
http://www.hanselman.com/blog/FiguringOutWhyMySVCHOSTEXEIsAt100CPUWithoutComplicatedToolsInWindows7.aspx

It probably has nothing to do with the ram BTW even with them being unmatched.

 

[PinchedNerve]

Thanks for the replies guys! I did find an answer this morning before going to work. Sorry I didn't have time to update here before. Thanks again for the help.

 

[bjaminnyc]

PinchedNerve can you post your solution? These forums are searchable, if someone encounters the same issue you'll save their day.

 

[PinchedNerve]

Sure. The following quote is from the person that helped me.

Task manager is usually helpful in picking out the culprit. On a fresh XP install it's strange but it could be an instance of svchost causing it. Have seen it before but always on older XP installations and there's a fix but I've found it doesn't always work http://www.technibble.com/how-to-fix-svchost-using-100-cpu-memory-leak/

All I needed was the fix_svchost.bat file from that linked page. The other 2 windows files were rejected by the Win XP SP3 I already had installed.