Computer acting really slow - Very High CPU Usage

LegacyUser

P4 2.5ghz
1 gig of ram
160gig seagate hd


My pc used to be perfect but it is acting really slow these days. When I press ctrl, alt delete the cpu usage is always around 60% in use and jumping up to 100% in spikes too.

I have nav 2004 and norton go back running in the background but even when I turn them off, it carries on.

I am on win xp sp2 and have defragged my hard disk.

Any ideas/

Gilgamesh

Buy Norton 2005 LOL

Gilgamesh

did you buy the Norton yourself or was it OEMd with your system,
If you bought from a Retailer, then you are entitled to get the latest version if it is released within 6 months of your purchase, you might want to look into that.
I know that Norton AV 2004 was VERY performance hungry, but the new one has improved

Ciaran500

Go to the processes tab in task manager, that will tell you what is using your CPU so much.

MickFarr

Open up your Task Manager and click on the Processes tabpage, sort by CPU and see what process is using up your CPU usage. Do a google on the name of that process to see if it is a virus of somekind.

Let us know what the process is.

see my attachment

Gurgle

Try spybot

gibo_ie

Probably Spyware/Malware.
In task manager go to processes and click on CPU, this will always show the process thats using the most cpu for this session on top.
Find the name, if it looks dodgey ( like tghhygert.exe or similar rubbish) "End Process" If PC speeds back up, you know what is causing the problem and will probably have to remove it from your registry among other things

WARNING: Do not use regedit if you dont know what you are doing, and make a backup beforehand anyway!!
in regedit it is usually
in "HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Currentversion\Run"
You will see the same entry on the right, delete it from here.
If in doubt shoot me a PM and ill help you out.
Gibo

LegacyUser

Hey guys, I made a typo. I have nav 2005. Full virus scan and no viruses.

When I sort by processing power, it says "system idle process" 99%. IS that normal? My hard disk light is always doing something.

Have spybot and Adaware too. All clear.

Thanks for the posts.

Wonder what it is...

Hobbes

It could be anything.

- Do a Checkdisk. If the disk is corrupted it can cause it to slow down.
- Defrag disk.
- Check to see you have enough diskspace on your pagefile drive. >100MB is generally good.
- Run Spybot and Ad-Aware
- Run a virus checker
- See if you have indexing on and if it is running (generally only older OS it slows the machine down)
- Does it slow down when you physically disconnect from the net (remove cable)

Or then that is the hard drive making a noise? It could be on its last legs.

Oh yea, Spybot has an advanced mode which will let you edit running tasks.

Also type in "tasklist /svc" at the command prompt and paste the results here (if you think it is safe to do so).

savemejebus

something similar happened me about 6 months ago. Turned out to be a trojan called pathname.exe. Nothing could pick it up and it was only by googling for each of the processes in the processes tab and eliminating each of them that i found it so you should do as gibo says and go that route if adaware and spybot don't work

LegacyUser

Guys i fixed it.

I had hundreds of redundant .dll files and i deleted them all using ashampoo win optomizer.

Bloody nightmare!!!!

Thanks again!!