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Group: Forum Members
Last Login: 6/3/2009 9:34:38 AM
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| I've had my Dell Inspiron 9400 with Vista Home Premium for a couple years and it's worked great, until a few days ago. All of a sudden the CPU fan turns on and I look to see 80-100% CPU usage, with no programs running. A while into troubleshooting the problem my hard drive crashes ... After putting in a brand new HD the original problem persists, even with a clean install of Vista, and no startup programs running. The startup diagnostic shows no failures, Windows is up to date, and the vents are clean/free of dust. This CPU bog down seems to happen randomly, sometimes before the windows load screen is even done, sometimes a few minutes into operation, and -always- when I try to load any kind of memory intensive program such as a game, and it is always accompanied by the fan going at full speed. Process explorer shows System Idle Process at about 70% CPU, and nothing else substantial. Being a brand new hard drive it couldn't be a virus, right? After countless hours of troubleshooting I'm at wit's end, please help!
*Inspiron Core 2 Duo 1.73GHz 2G RAM
*ATI Mobility Radeon X1400
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Lead Forum Moderator
Group: Vista Forum Moderator
Last Login: Today @ 10:05:22 AM
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| Last time I checked on this, the mean time for an exposed PC to get infected on the net was less than 5 minutes, so a new drive, or a new install, is no guarantee against a virus -- unless you're behind a hardware firewall.
Would suggest you do the following in an attempt to track down the culprit:
1) Run msconfig, open startup tab, disable ALL the startup items
2) reboot and see if problem repeats
3) if not, run msconfig again, enable one startup item
4) reboot and see if problem repeats
5) continue steps 3 and 4 until the problem repeats. Last item enabled is the culprit.
ASUS A832nSLI-Deluxe, AMD 64X2 4400 OC 2.4GHz, 2GB OCZ,
Running: Windows 7, Vista 32-bit, Ubuntu 9.04
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Group: Forum Members
Last Login: 6/3/2009 9:34:38 AM
Posts: 3, Visits: 7 |
| The problem started up before I could even set up a network connection - and it persists with no startup items running
*Inspiron Core 2 Duo 1.73GHz 2G RAM
*ATI Mobility Radeon X1400
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Lead Forum Moderator
Group: Vista Forum Moderator
Last Login: Today @ 10:05:22 AM
Posts: 2,661, Visits: 2,800 |
| Have you been applying Windows Updates regularly?
Asking because there was a serious bug with WU that when you turned it on, if there were a LOT of updates pending, it would max out the CPU until it analyzed and listed all the updates.
The other think you can do is open the performance monitor look at the processes running, make a note of the ones using lots of CPU, and google for info on them. That will help you determine if you have some malware that has taken over your PC.
ASUS A832nSLI-Deluxe, AMD 64X2 4400 OC 2.4GHz, 2GB OCZ,
Running: Windows 7, Vista 32-bit, Ubuntu 9.04
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Group: Forum Members
Last Login: 6/3/2009 9:34:38 AM
Posts: 3, Visits: 7 |
| I've downloaded 70 some updates, including the 2 service packs already. And Process Explorer shows;
System Idle Process 70-80
procexp.exe 18-19
dwm.exe 3-5
Beyond that random things just spike up to about 1-3% then quickly drop back down - svchost.exe, Interrupts, System
*Inspiron Core 2 Duo 1.73GHz 2G RAM
*ATI Mobility Radeon X1400
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Lead Forum Moderator
Group: Vista Forum Moderator
Last Login: Today @ 10:05:22 AM
Posts: 2,661, Visits: 2,800 |
| All that comes to mind is that you may have automatic updates turned on. Suggest you turn off automatic updates and set it to notify you only. That way, it won't be applying updates when you're in the middle of something.
ASUS A832nSLI-Deluxe, AMD 64X2 4400 OC 2.4GHz, 2GB OCZ,
Running: Windows 7, Vista 32-bit, Ubuntu 9.04
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