CPU usage always at least 10%

[emthompson 0]

---EDIT---

OK further dectective work has shined a little light on the problem. I turned the refresh frequency of the Task manager to high. Now the CPU usage goes from 2% to 20% then back again about every second. This seems very strage. I looked on the knowledge base and it gave me this article http://support.microsoft.com/search/preview.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;Q276465, that dealt with High CPU Utilization Occurs with Windows Media Monitor Service. It said that someone might be sending a buch of garbage that would cause the spu utilization to be high. It gave an command to run under CMD that would list all or the active connections. I have 7 active connections. You wold think that if this was the problem that this attack and CPU usage would stop when I unplug the lan cable but it doesnt. So now I am back at square one unless I an wrong.

 

 

Just recently I started to get stuttering and skipps in my video. I have a radeon 8500 and I thought that the card was making the skipping problem. I analyzed my xp setup and the directx logs that I made and still I found no problems with the video card. I even tried almost every driver for it but still nothing, untill one day. I was just messing around with a friend online and he asked what processes where taking up CPU usage. I told him that system and system idle process where taking up that most time. then I told him that after watching the cpu meter for a couple of min of no activity that the usage nver got below 10%. He said that this was very weird because his XP when in idle only ran at most 3% usage. He also said that this was very weird for my chip, and XP 1700 because it is so powerfull. So we started talking about what could be wrong. We came up with the idea that it was a trojan that was doing stuff with the cpu. I decided to do a fresh install. After, getting XP up and running again that problem is still there. The CPU usage never drops below 10%. So I have no clue as to what to do now. I know that it hasnt always been like this becasue I remember my CPU usage being around 3%. So if anyone has any suggestions, please send them my way.

 

System setup

XP 1700

Epox 8KHA+ (Original bios not OCed)

512 DDR 2400

Maxtor 30gig 7200

WD 30 gig 7200

3Comm 10/100

Creative Sound Blaset live value

Radeon 8500

[^b0rG^ 0]

You may want to see if you have S.M.A.R.T. enabled on your HD in the bios. Just having this enabled causes network traffic, and therefore some cpu usage. Though I don't think it should be that extreme. The sblive may be part of your problem as well. It's a notoriously "hungry" peice of hardware needing lots of cpu time and memory. Also it tends not to play well with others. Try moving it to a different pci slot (make sure it's not in the one right below the agp slot ever, that's definately bad) so that it will grab a different irq. It should not share irq's with any other device if at all possible.

On the subject of the 8500, have you tried the leaked drivers? I'm running the 6058's only leaked a few days ago. I keep up to date with www.rage3d.com which is THE source for ATi info. Hope some of this helps.

[Sampson 0]

Go to your Device Manager and click on View to get devices by connection and look at the number of devices sharing the same IRQ. If your network card, USB, video and sound card all share the same IRQ, the activity you've observed is the system monitoring them and umpiring amongst them. This may certainly be the problem with the skipping which can be your soundcard as much as your video card.

[Alien 1]

I've never known S.M.A.R.T. to cause any probs, in fact it's the reason why I know that my IBM 75GXP is curently @ 35&degC, thanks to SpeedFan - gotta love that little prog.

[emthompson 0]

Well my SBlive and my 3com and my video card are all using the same IRQ, #11> If I changed the position of the sblive you think that it will grab another IRQ?

[Sampson 0]

No, that won't change the IRQ's, but I have seen where it will allow the SB Live to "play with others well." Your machine was setup to allow ACPI to manage your devices. This is the default manner of installing W2k and XP. On many VIA chip systems because there have been issues between the 4-in-1 drivers and windows over IRQ management, some interrupt the Windows Installation and choose Standard Computer which disables ACPI management and permits the BIOS to set the IRQ - and you set the IRQ's in your Bios.

 

This problem is well documented. Here is the Windows page: http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;q269491 . Epox has made some spendid boards. It would not surprise me that they would have an updated bios that you could flash that has already addressed the problem.

 

Easiest thing to do - try the SB Live in different slots to see if the skipping disappears.

Harder but not as risky - set your IRQ through your Bios, reinstall Windows and interrupt the install as Standard Computer to disable ACPI

Risky if you haven't done it before - get the latest Bios file from the EPOX website and flash your Motherboard's Bios.

[emthompson 0]

OK, this is what I did to try to figure out what was causing my CPu flux problem. I isolated every piece of my system down to the seperate sticks of ram and it does it with every piece of hardware I have. I even changed the harddrive that XP was on to see if that was it but nope. So now I am going to take Sampsons advise and flash the bios for my board. Im not sure if this will help but Im going to try anyway. I still dont understand why this problem would occur just out of the blue. I will let you guys know what happens.

[evl_j0ker 0]

Yea man i have the same problem..I've updated my bios i've reinstalled and every thing...can't figure it out...

 

 

amd athlon xp 1700+

Geforce 4 mx 440

Via ac97 (Not sure how uptodate)

512 ddr 2100

windows xp home sp1

10/100 linksys

sound blaster 4.1