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10 Percent CPU Usage

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by bladedthoth

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Okay, I've been having a bizarre time trying to figure this one out.

The situation is this: I am taking a system performance hit straight to my CPU. Supposedly, according to 'Task Manager', the 'System' process chews up a constant 10% of CPU usage except for when other events are on the go. I didn't think much of it at first besides being a small annoyance, thinking it is just WindowsXP Pro's overhead (It's been there to my knowledge since I installed WinXP Pro). Originally I had the drive in a P3 450MHz system, and now moved over to a 1.3GHz Duron, in which the only hardware moved over was the hard drive, the TNT2 card and the CD Burner. When I upgraded, the amount of CPU usage still sits at a constant 10% (Of course unless I cause something to access the system process). I have shut down every single COM+ componant, every single service, ripped apart the registry for hidden processes, and used a bunch of programs to weed through other portions of the OS, to no avail. I've pulledout every componany except the hard drive, I've swapped video card, and nothing seems to work. I know that this is just not right, because it stayed at an exact 10% before and after the upgrade, and the fact that it does visably effect the performance of my computer. It even does it in Safe Mode as well. I know that this (Shouldn't) be a WinXP issue, because I have talked to other WinXP Pro users who have had 450MHz systems and various other speeds, and they don't get a fixed CPU bandwidth taken by the System process.

Please help!

Thank you :D

6 replies

by dklippert

If appropriate, turn off your Zip drive or disable autorun for removable devices.
Any USB devices?

by thechas

1. If this was an upgrade, there may be a few corrupt files around.
Both system, and driver files could be bad and causing strange actions.

2. Have you tried scanning for Ad-Ware and Spy-Ware?
It is almost as bad a cat and mouse game as the hackers and scum writing viruses.
I am amased at the amount of Ad-Ware that Lavasoft's AdAware finds on most systems.

3. I don't like how the new version of MSN messenger takes over the system, so I either don't install it, or remove it from all systems I take care of.

4. Check group policies.
I just followed a tip I found to shut down the 20% of bandwidth reserved for QoS packets, and vastly improved my performance while on-line.
Some service or program may have set a policy that is reserving 10% of your CPU time.

Chas

by thechas

One other thought.

This may not take care of the 10% resource used, but may improve performance.

Some socket A motherboards under-clock the CPU.
This happens most often with SDRAM based systems.
Make sure in BIOS settings, that the FSB, and clock multiplier are set properly.
DDR ram 200MHz, 6.5*
SDRAM 100MHz, 13*

Chas

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