CPU usage 100% for no reason

[cannedmeat]

I have a PC that that I bought awhile ago and it is 100% perfect according to the vista upgrade advisor app.

I am using my powertogether (MS Campaign) version of vista business(32bit) and it installs without a hitch. but it is laggy. I used actual drivers for vista on my Vid card, Printer Etc. but it is slow and laggy

I used EVEREST home edition to snoop out my specs.

my specs:

Compaq SR1730Z CTO(Custom to order)

AMD64 3700+ Sandiego w/ 1MB cache

2GB PC3200 DDR ram

160GB SATA drive

lightscribe DVD burner (dual layer

no name DVD-Rom

SB Audigy4

ATI x1800GTO 256MB DDR3

ATI Xpress200 chipset (ATI RS482/RX482 northbridge, ATI SB450 southbridge)

Now mind you, it runs nicely otherwise albeit the lag and the task manager telling me my CPU is screaming along at 80-100% usage.

My best educated guess is my chipset doesn't play well. So i spoke to a rep at HP and he said that ATI hasn't released official drivers yet for Vista. no idea when but HP does have Vista added under the support/drivers. So i guess that will come soon!?!

what causes the CPU to run so high when my task manager says it is running at or near 100% the idle process uses like 80% but nothing else seems to come about when i click the "processes by user" button.

any ideas? I like Vista and it was free and otherwise a fun OS to tinker with.

BTW, I tried to use the WEI (windows experience index) rating app and it always gets to the end then says that too much interference causes it to not be able to finish.

[freak_power]

Disable SuperFetch, ReadyBoost, System Restore and tell me how is it going?

[Linkinfamous]

The system idle process is not a process. It's basically a place holder that shows your free cpu.

[Nightwind Hawk]

Yeah, what Mio said. If you click the Performance tab, your CPU shouldn't be too high (mine's 0-2% idle).

However, CPU aside, memory does seem to be a high-end resource :unsure: With just tasks such as Firefox and Gaim, Vista uses up nearly 1.3 GB of memory. Anybody else noticing this?

[nautiqueskier]

Vista actually doesn't use as much RAM as it seems, but it caches your frequently accessed files on startup so that frequently-used apps and such will load faster. This is otherwise known as SuperFetch, and is why hard drives tend to do a lot of "thrashing" when Vista first boots.

If another program actually needs any of this memory, Vista will instantly release it.

The idea here (and accurately) is that free RAM is wasted RAM so Vista tries to use as much RAM as possible.

Nobody seems to get this and reports that Vista uses massive amounts of RAM, and while it definitely uses more RAM than XP, its not as bad as it first appears.

[solardog]

  Ames said:

Vista actually doesn't use as much RAM as it seems, but it caches your frequently accessed files on startup so that frequently-used apps and such will load faster. This is otherwise known as SuperFetch, and is why hard drives tend to do a lot of "thrashing" when Vista first boots.

If another program actually needs any of this memory, Vista will instantly release it.

The idea here (and accurately) is that free RAM is wasted RAM so Vista tries to use as much RAM as possible.

Nobody seems to get this and reports that Vista uses massive amounts of RAM, and while it definitely uses more RAM than XP, its not as bad as it first appears.

Thank you. That clears that up for me very nicely.

[Brandon Live Veteran]

Have you clicked the "Show process from all users" button and then clicked the CPU column header to sort by CPU usage and see which process is using the most CPU cycles?

[Nightwind Hawk]

Thanks for the explanation Ames. :)

[heavensblade23]

  freak_power said:

Disable SuperFetch, ReadyBoost, System Restore and tell me how is it going?

Disabling the first two of those would decrease performance, not increase it. Don't dispense advice unless you know what you're talking about.

[cannedmeat]

  Brandon Live said:

Have you clicked the "Show process from all users" button and then clicked the CPU column header to sort by CPU usage and see which process is using the most CPU cycles?

yeah but, there's nothing showing why other than system kernel which is running like a cat in heat :cry: