Chess program progressively uses more CPU the longer XP is up.

[drdrew]

Hey all,

I actually fix people's computer problems as a side gig and my own when it needs it. I am very careful what I install and run, and have KIS 2010 installed as my primary AV and Antivir as an on-demand (not running normally) scanner for a second opinion. I also scan with Spyware Doctor once a month to see if anything falls through the cracks and the only thing it ever finds is cookies (which I actually try to block with one of Firefox's cookie blocking plug-ins).

So basically I wouldn't normally need to ask for help unless I had no ideas left to try, and this time I don't. When I first boot my computer memory usage is pretty low - 300-400mb total - as I only enable the essentials in Msconfig. I do have XP SP3, 2Gb RAM, AMD X2 3800, Geforce 8500, 2 TV tuner cards, HD sound card. I run CCleaner every couple weeks and I just ran it earlier, and I just ran HijackThis and found nothing suspicious. Basically all I have starting with my computer is Acronis TrueImage, Logitech Setpoint, KIS 2010, Peerguardian, and MS Activesync.

That's the back-story. Now the problem is the chess program I have been using for many years called Babaschess (same exact version as no new ones are available) will eventually take 7 seconds to load and consume 100% of one of the two cores on my processor while doing so. When I first boot the computer, however, it loads in just over 1 second, and does not consume that much CPU for long. Also, when you close Babaschess when this issue is present, it also consumes 50% CPU, but closes quickly when the computer just boots. Actually the slow load of Babaschess takes a day or two before it materializes, whereby I don't restart XP in that time. I haven't timed the load time at different time intervals, but it does seem to take progressively longer as time goes on.

The last time I had this issue I closed down every single application from KIS to Setpoint to explorer to Peerguardian one at a time to see if it would affect Babaschess's load time, but it still took 7 seconds each time to load. Once it's loaded Babaschess runs fine and actually never takes up more memory than say 15mb. I got XP down to the bare processes and still Babaschess takes that much time to load. Once you restart the computer, everything is back to normal - 1 second-ish load time.

I have tried uninstalling and then reinstalling Babaschess to no avail. I do notice that KIS uses more and more virtual memory in Task Manager the longer XP is up (40mb up to 160mb), but I did close that down before testing Babaschess. I don't know when exactly this problem started, but it seems like it's only been during 2009. The only hardware change is an increase in memory from 1Gb to 2Gb and the new memory is Memtested and I have had no Memory errors or anything to speak of. My only idea is reinstalling XP with SP3, but that is annoying and may not solve anything. I have Googled Babaschess and high cpu and found nothing really.

I think I have provided enough info for someone to hopefully figure something that could cause this increase in CPU usage with this program. I use the program frequently and will deal with this issue assuming it is not malware related (but I really doubt it is).

Thanks in advance,

Drew