CPU Usage 100% Problem

[Discusman]

I have a Dell P4 2.6 GHz with 640MB Ram and the computer is about 2 years old.

Lately I have been downloading big video files from the internet alot and moving big files from one folder to the other.

While the computer is performing these tasks, I noticed the computer is very slow, I can't even do anything else (such as open another IE browser to do stuff on the internet or play Counter-Strike online).

I open up Windows Task Manager and noticed the CPU Usage is always over 95%. I had to leave my Air Conditional ON all the time in order to keep the room temp down around 68F, otherwise, my computer would lag more.

I mean I have a P4 2.6GHz computer, I would expect it could do more and perform better than what I have seen it performed.

To my knowledge, high CPU usage means CPU couldn't process all the tasks fast enough, therefore, it creates major lag.

Does anyone know any tricks to resolve this problem without telling me to buy a P4 3.0GHz Dell? Thanks.

 

[mrzeeedler]

dude its a dell what did u expect? no kidding my 2.26 does the same thing. hyper threading would make that faster

 

[Discusman]

dude its a dell what did u expect? no kidding my 2.26 does the same thing. hyper threading would make that faster

Dude,

I thought Dell is a fast and reliable computer. Download and copy files from one location to another shouldn't lag the computer that badly.

So the 3.0 Ghz is a hyper threading CPU?

 

[compy]

well it depends i believe you have to buy it with ht. you can buy it with it or without. correct me some one if i'm wrong.

 

[Demalii]

Most likely you're stocked up with tons of adware, download ad-aware, update and run it.. almost give spybot a run and then restart and watch how much faster it'll run =)

 

[D4RK GR4YL3N]

Download Spybot Search and Destroy and run it a few times. It should clear up your systems sypware/adware. http://www.safer-networking.org/en/mirrors/index.html

 

[mrzeeedler]

Still your comps gonna lagg that much when ur trying to copy huge files like that. My computer is hella optimized and it does. ANd a 2.6 isnt far from the 2.26 and im running 768mb of rambus memory which is probably about 10x faster then whats in ur dell.

 

[chesman]

ok, first of all, no need to buy a new computer, that one should do you for quite sometime.

The Ram seems sufficient, so that shouldn't be the problem.

But Demalii may be right, some of this problem could be due to all that crappy adware out there, just download adaware off of download.com, and give it a whilr, its not the best out there, but its free, and easy to use for now, and may i suggest if you do not have one now, an good firewall, i used norton firewall 2002, and it works great, never had ANY adware, but if that is too expensive fgor you, try the free ones kicking around, AVG is the best, or blackice maybe.

well, just in case you owuld like to know, i am a nut when it comes to making sure my computer runs at peak performance, so here is what i would do if i were to be in your position:

1: Setup a firewall/virus scanner
2: scan for virus's
3: scan and clean adware/spyware
4: defrag your hard drive
5: if you have two hard drives, set your page file to be on the second hard drive, the one not used to house the system files. and make it a bit bigger, this dramaticcly increases load times and performance on the computer.

hope that helps, if you need more info, msg me!!

 

[mrzeeedler]

I notice you said that
5: if you have two hard drives, set your page file to be on the second hard drive, the one not used to house the system files. and make it a bit bigger, this dramaticcly increases load times and performance on the computer
chesman if your paging file is on the 5400 rpm its probably slower but if its on the 7200 it will be considerably faster.

 

[sethduncan]

Also see how fast the hard drive is. If it's dell, they may have been gay and put in a 5400rpm, or it may be starting to go on you. However, if it's a 2.6 and it's two years old, that was a pretty rocking machine in 2002, so it may have a 7200rpm drive. I dunno, check those out. Also go download some sort of S.M.A.R.T. utility to check the hard drive for errors. For example, SpeedFan is mostly for temps, but it has S.M.A.R.T. reading capability, and it'll tell you if anything is jacked up with your hard drive.