Hey guys,

I've just got this new laptop (well, when I say new I mean new to me ) and have installed XP Professional SP3 on it. However, it seems to put my CPU under 100% load all the time. I've run anti-virus, and it didn't find anything. Installed all the lastest drivers and updates and it still made no difference.

I've tried these solutions to no avail. There's also nothing nefarious running in Task Manager either. Oh, and before I forget, I tried XP Home SP2 on it, and it gave the same problem. I've also tried two different HDDs and loads of sticks of RAM. I don't really want to put anything above Vista on it because it looks arse as the GPU doesn't support Aero.

Any ideas on this weird problem? I'm completely lost as to what it could be. it's not as if XP is taxing on the system (specs below) as it's well within the specs to run it.

Cheers

2.4ghz Celeron D
2gb DDR333 RAM
40GB Seagate HDD
SiS Mirage Graphics
SiS 661FX NB/SB thingie
DVDRW drive

Dodgy driver?
If it does it on a clean install it has to be either a dodgy driver or a stuck sensor on the cpu

I've just tried reinstalling Windows again, using no drivers whatsoever and it's still the same. I've also tried a 1.7ghz Pentium 4 and it was the same.

Oh well, I guess I'll have to cope with it. Thanks anyway dude.

XP Fail.

I fixed it

It seemed that the Indexing Service was taking priority over every other process running in the system. But yet the HDD wasn't been attacked, so Idk.

It seems to be OK now. I'll keep you posted.

Cheers guys

Glad you sorted it .

...Aaand it's back. Lacloss, you're a bad luck charm

As soon as I open any program now, it shoots up to 100% usage until I restart the laptop.

I might prescribe it some fire.

Did you turn off the indexing ,
http://lifehacker.com/031440/turn-off-indexing-and-speed-up-windows-xp

have you had a look in Process Explorer? it goes a fair bit deeper than Task Manager, and should tell you if its a faulty driver (will show high DPCs) or a sneaky virus thats evading Task Manager and its just useful to have around in general, i use it while benchmarking games to study the CPU load graphs for individual processes, much better than Task Manager.

I'm now thinking that the CPU is farked, as installing Ubuntu yielded the same results. 100% useage no matter what.

I should be getting a new CPU soon enough, so I'll let you lot know if that cured it.

I'm guessing it's a power saving feature. I don't know about your processor, but on one of my old AMDs it basically went into suspend hundreds of times a second which looked like 100% CPU utilisation even though it wasn't. I disabled it because it was pants.

Anything in the Bios you can turn on / off ?

I can disable ACPI in the bios, but that makes no difference. It just makes the power button into an instant-off instead of sending a shutdown signal to the OS.

Not having a battery in it couldn't cause it though could it?

I seem to have sorted it (thanks to Alexgadgetman!)!

I got a 2.8ghz Pentium 4 HT from Alex, and put it in here. It now seems to be OK, and I can even run Windows 7! I guess the old Celery was knackered. Not that I know how a CPU can knacker up, but still.

Thanks for all the help otherwise guys. Appreciate it!