CPU Usage Spikes - Help

brens

My laptop's CPU Usage is spiking when I'm logged in under my profile on the network in the office. The fan is constantly on and it's driving me mad (like Chinese water torture). It goes completely mad when I'm doing anything substantial in Excel and even if I close Excel the process spikes to 97 percent for about 2 minutes unless I end the process.

I don't get any problems when I log on as administrator on the laptop and don't connect to the network.

And all virus definitions are up to date.

Any ideas?

brens

Here is a bitmap of my task manager when excel is using all the resources.

I've tried all sorts of stuff like HijackThis; Lavasoft; Spybot; Virus scans etc. All clear.

Can anyone please shed some light on it. I'm driven demented. I'm at the point of formatting the hard disk and starting again. Don't make me do it..pleeeaseee.

Won't somebody please think of the children!!

Will_hendrix

laptops's and multi... tasking, humm..... lap.. tops, multi.. task...
you know with small cache's, and severely low power provided i would imagine laptops work best one program at a time, you seem to have a LOT of backround programs running on the backround from what i see in the taskbar system tray. i dont have a lap top so im not sure, my quess is its trying to suck water from desert sand with so many programs and a low wattage, well, theres my 2 cents worth... hope it helps, oh try defrag the harddisk aswell, have cpu useage and high disk assess seem to be linked sometimes, hope it helps

kinkstr

Nukem get yourself in here and help this chap

Capt'n Midnight

go into power management and turn everything down including processor speed. there may also be a setting for fan there - also make sure all the vents arent blocked and it's on a flat surface. It will of course run slower.

brens

Thanks for the suggestions. I've stopped all the processes that were running unecessarily in the system tray and done a defrag etc. It does seem to have had an effect, but not completely. It takes about a minute 50 to end the excel process now instead of 2 minutes. The fan is still going mental.

I've noticed just now that the fan goes really wild when the clipboard icon is in the system tray. I did come across a Microsoft article early on when I had this problem http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?kbid=305949 which mentioned a known issue when Autosave is on, but I've never had autosave on so I never thought it would be the issue.

Any more ideas? Who is this guy Nukem?

brens

I set the clipboard's option to "Stop Collecting" but it made no difference.

stevenmu

My first guess would be that excel is trying to access something over the network and that's what's taking the time. How is your network speed generally, fast or slow ? Are there any mapped drives that have a red x beside them in My Computer ?

<edit>also, in excel, go to Tools->Options->General and check that the default file locations all point to a local drive.</edit>

brens

The default location was the My Documents folder under my profile name. I have changed it to the My Documents folder under the Administrator profile now, but there is no difference.

There are no unmapped network drives and the speed over the network is fine except when Excel is hogging all the resources. I've worked on big Access and SQL server databases over the network no problem.

I'm pretty sure it's a local issue.