New PC problems

[Wheels]

hey everyone,

I have bought new hardware yesterday, and putted it all together with a friend. But I'm having one big problem... on a clean windows XP home edition, my cpu goes very often to 100%... just starting up the Internet explorer is enough to get the CPU usage to 100%. Anyway to get the usage down?

My hardware is:
4x 1gig corsair DDRII @800mhz RAM
4x Western Digital SATAII hdd's each 320gig 16MB cache
2x XFX GeForce 7950 GX2 each 1gig, SLI
1x Asus P5N32 -SLI Premium /Wifi-AP edition
1x PentiumD at 3.40ghz
1x Hercules Fortissimo 4 soundcard

My point is, if this config is just enough to open IE, or do one windows update at a time... What is it going to cost me to fly my flightsims ????

thx in advance

[Cash]

http://download.sysinternals.com/Files/ProcessExplorer.zip

see what service is taking up all cpu time.

[Wheels]

thanks, I'll give it a try

[Deckerd]

You could also try 3dmark or pcmark to see if computing power is really reduced. Maybe it's only a service that uses your idle cpu. It could also be an application that continuously tries to acces the internet, check your firewall. Note, that 100% peaks on launching programs(e.g iexplorer) are normal. CPU load should drop instantly, though.

[thebeev]

Note, that 100% peaks on launching programs(e.g iexplorer) are normal. CPU load should drop instantly, though.

Was going to say that too, did you say you ran the windows update if so how long were you browsing the internet before you ran the updates? IE might need to be patched, are you running any other browsers(firefox, mozilla) if so are they doing the same thing?

[Vampire14]

Was going to say that too,

Ditto - also with my new system I have noticed something that has never happened before, when I close donw a program or even a window sometimes, the task bar won't pop up for about 5-10 seconds, it is like it just freezes and the CPU is maxing.
So can't do anything till it sorts itself out - not sure what is going on.
Got XP SP2 and is kinda wierd as i have not seen it happen before.
Probably not related but maybe with this new software/mobo/dual cores etc just little strange glitches have popped up.

[bstar07]

How about to check your hardware manager and check if there are not suitable drivers are installed on your computer. When wrong hardware drivers are intalled for the wrong hardware, computers run slow. But.. I guess your computer is infected by a virus, so I recommand you to install any vacine software on your computer and scan it. or install Winodws security patches.
If your computer is hard to run IE, then download Windows patches from other computers such as your friend's and install it on yours manually. service pack2 is the essential patch to install Windows before hooking up Internet

[Wheels]

updating windows helped a bit, but still ... some smaal opreations like using firefox or installing a program, takes like 4-5 times the normal time ... I've installed FS2004 ... took me about 4.30h ... FSX would have taken me about 10 hrs ...
starting up Firefox takes between 30 and 60 seconds ...

BTW my power unit is 700W ... nomaly this should be enough

[Cobra]

your cpu shouldnt be running at 100% (maybe for a sec or two when u first open a program such as firefox but that is it)

do ctrl-alt-del and it will open Windows Task Manager and see if you can work out what is forcing your cpu to be running at 100%.

:smile:

[thebeev]

When I close donw a program or even a window sometimes, the task bar won't pop up for about 5-10 seconds, it is like it just freezes and the CPU is maxing.

Maybe you have spyware on your computer, have your run antispyware software lately? Of course how long ago have you updated windows?

Also, have your ran the defrag utility. If your harddrive is fragmented that could cause performance issues. One thing I like to do after maybe about 2 years or so of using my PC, is I format everything and start again with a fresh install of windows.

@Wheels - When you do the ctrl-alt-del, if you find a process that is maxing out your CPU. When you try to kill it, and if it won't let you, denies you. Right Click "My Computer" then go to "Manage" and look for services. Expand that tree and see if you find a service that has the same name, stop that service, but make sure you check the discription incase its not a critical service that runs a part of windows. Also, check your startup folder and see if anything is getting loaded during bootup that would keep your CPU maxed.

[Deckerd]

What about your harddisk?
-fragmented pagefile(did you give it enough diskspace or is it split)
-disk fragmentation in general (would be strange, but who knows...)
-formatting: Fat32 or NTFS
About your memory
-Use Goldmemory to check your Ram(corrupt memory doesn't necessarily mean bluescreens)
About your internet connection
-Do you have Framework installed?
-Did you try to disable your network adapters(the NICs only should be enough) and try again.
-->If that helped, you have an app that wants to connect

Two last things:
-Is your cd-rom tray empty. Sometimes scratched/damaged CDs cause Windows to try to autostart it over and over again
-Open your case and see if fans run smooth and components don't run hot. e.g. CPU GPU RAM south/northbridge

[bstar07]

Did you set up BIOS by yourself? Why not check your BIOS if you make any mistakes while setting yours? When BIOS set up is not suitable with your hardware, computers often go slow.

[bflagg]

Does it occur in safe mode?
If so, run msconfig and disable everything, and turn them on on by one...

If that doesn't help..go the hardware check route...
Take the sound card, extra vid card out. (uninstall their drivers/apps)

Disable just about every peripheral in the bios (sound,nic..etc...)
Disable any power saving settings...

Other than that, I'd say you got a virus during your install (if you were connected to the net or updating from MS before install antiVirus).
((this has happened to me before..))

[Wheels]

hey guys, thanks very much for all the possible solutions !!! ... I've printed them and taken it to a shop which repairs computers ... They'll have to fix it, I'm now to busy with my tasks for school which I have to hand in, in two weeks... after that studying for my examens in January.
I hope I have my pc back next week, otherwise I'm going to be in a lot of trouble, still alot of work to finish

But again thx for all the help