CPU usage 100% ?!?

Karembeu · Post by **Karembeu** » Fri Oct 15, 2004 11:16 am

Hey there! Have a little problem with my computer. Lately Ive noticed that the computer has slowed down quite a bit. CPU usage is sometimes up to 100% and almost always over 50%....

Have quite a few movies on my comp....and its always the file sharing programme DC++ that eats up all the resources...

My system is a P4 3Ghz with 1Gb RAM. Really I shouldnt be having these problems...

Any tips on how to solve this?!? I heard something about Windows XP having trouble with AVI filetype movies...anyone know anything about that?!?

Oh...and I have searched for viruses and spyware...came up with nothing!

Xandax · Post by **Xandax** » Fri Oct 15, 2004 11:29 am

Unless thoese movies are legal, I would strongly advice you to remove all mention of them and the usage of DC++ from the board.

Vicsun · Post by **Vicsun** » Fri Oct 15, 2004 1:15 pm

Sounds like your system is infested with spy- and adware. Install adAware and SpyBot Search&Destroy and scan your computer. Those two (together) should clear your system from spyware and adware.

Then install firefox. Security aside, it's a lot more functional than IE. I've written two threads promoting it - in comparison to firefox, IE seems stone-age like. Everyone I've ever showed it to have praised me for opening their eyes

Oh, and also: what happens when you open the task manager, click on 'processes' and sort them by cpu usage? Which are the ones that come up near the top?

DC++ doesn't come bundled with spyware, so unless there's a memory leak (have you upgraded to the latest version? Have others experienced your problem? You might want to post in the DC++ forums if you are sure it's DC++ that's eating all your resources. Alternatively you can just shut it down while you're not using it) you shouldn't be experiencing any problems. Also for the brief time that I used it I didn't experience a lot of CPU drain (I have an Athlon 2200+).

You might also want to uninstall all your video codecs and install Nimo Codec Pack afresh. Be sure to not do a full install as it clutter your system with mostly useless codecs. Just install what they recommend; I've always found it to work for me.

That's all the advice I can give

And by the way, I see no indication of the movies being downloaded illegally - there are a lot of services on the web which let you legally download movies for a fee. I know EDonkey provides such a service. Let's not be quick to point fingers when we don't have enough information

Xandax · Post by **Xandax** » Fri Oct 15, 2004 2:25 pm

I'm not pointing fingers. I'm warning, due to the very strict rules Buck has regarding piracy products.

Besides - DC++ and other P2P might be usable to share legal stuff, but that is not the main usage for sure, and certainly not why they became popular.

Karembeu · Post by **Karembeu** » Fri Oct 15, 2004 5:19 pm

[QUOTE=Xandax]I'm not pointing fingers. I'm warning, due to the very strict rules Buck has regarding piracy products.

Besides - DC++ and other P2P might be usable to share legal stuff, but that is not the main usage for sure, and certainly not why they became popular.[/QUOTE]

The "movies" in question are 11 Gb of Nikefootball "showdown around the world" which could/can be freely downloaded at the http://www.nikefootball.com site.

Ive always thought that movies look best on the TV and thats the way its going to stay...so no worries there...

Still doesnt solve my problem though...

Vicsun · Post by **Vicsun** » Sat Oct 16, 2004 5:04 am

[QUOTE=Xandax]Besides - DC++ and other P2P might be usable to share legal stuff, but that is not the main usage for sure, and certainly not why they became popular.[/QUOTE]
Innocent until proven guilty

Seriously though, I view the popular opinion that p2p = evil used for pirating, quite damaging for this new and potentially extremely useful technology. But now's not the time or place to discuss it, so I'll just drop it

@Karembeu: did you do what I suggested? What were the results?

Xandax · Post by **Xandax** » Sat Oct 16, 2004 6:09 am

[QUOTE=Vicsun]Innocent until proven guilty

Seriously though, I view the popular opinion that p2p = evil used for pirating, quite damaging for this new and potentially extremely useful technology. But now's not the time or place to discuss it, so I'll just drop it
<snip>
[/QUOTE]

It is not a matter of being innocent or guilty.
It is a matter of Buck having strict rules against piracted products for various reasons. And as usefull as the P2P technology is - it is a well know fact that countless of pirated products flow via them.
Thus it is my buisness as moderator to make that point clear regardless of the way I personally view them.

Karembeu · Post by **Karembeu** » Sat Oct 16, 2004 9:47 am

[QUOTE=Vicsun]@Karembeu: did you do what I suggested? What were the results?[/QUOTE]

Yup, searched my computer with both Ad-aware and Spybot search and destroy....found nothing at all so it doesnt seem to be infected with anything... Also sorted the programs running in taskmanager by CPU usage and the two that came up on top were DC++ and "Systemets vänteprocess" (sorry dont know how to translate it to English but since I can see you are a "nordisk" neighbour maybe you can figure out what it means).

Heard about some sort of problem for Windows XP reading AVI files....you ever heard of that?!? There's supposed to be some sort of fix around somewhere!

Oh and ja....the CPU usage is still the same...so problem still here...

Xandax · Post by **Xandax** » Sat Oct 16, 2004 11:16 am

That process is most likely the "Idle" process. When the computer is doing nothing (or little)

Karembeu · Post by **Karembeu** » Sat Oct 16, 2004 11:29 am

[QUOTE=Xandax]That process is most likely the "Idle" process. When the computer is doing nothing (or little)[/QUOTE]

Does that mean that there is something wrong then if that is taking up a lot of CPU usage?

Xandax · Post by **Xandax** » Sat Oct 16, 2004 2:25 pm

Well - I'm not 100% sure, because I don't think you should have an idle process, or maybe that is OS determined or something.
I don't have a process showing idle state (I think) that I can see.... (WinXP SP2)

Rookierookie · Post by **Rookierookie** » Sat Oct 16, 2004 7:58 pm

System Idle Process 100% = CPU usage 0%

Mr Flibble · Post by **Mr Flibble** » Mon Oct 18, 2004 10:50 pm

The problem may be too many concurrent connections. Most P2P apps set the values way too high, and XP or any desktop OS can only handle so many TCP connections at once. Try limiting the number of concurrent downloads/uploads to under 10 each way.

Rookierookie · Post by **Rookierookie** » Tue Oct 19, 2004 3:09 am

P2P programs tend to eat RAM and bandwidth rather than CPU time.

Brynn · Post by **Brynn** » Fri Nov 12, 2004 3:47 am

[QUOTE=Karembeu]Hey there! Have a little problem with my computer. Lately Ive noticed that the computer has slowed down quite a bit. CPU usage is sometimes up to 100% and almost always over 50%....[/QUOTE]

that's EXACTLY what happened to me last week! Right at startup, it was 100%, and I was going crazy b/c I couldn't even run a virus search

And of course, there was no sign of anything weird running in the process list.

But the solution was quite easy, I run Windows in safe mode (it only loads the drivers at startup), run msconfig and what did I see? "webspecials" as a startup program!!! Have no idea what the hell that was, but deselecting it in msconfig and removing the file itself afterwards (and three others of that kind) solved the problem

tom the terribl · Post by **tom the terribl** » Sat Nov 13, 2004 3:59 am

Cpu

You did not say how much ram you have but for a fast cpu it best to have at least 2gb or more. If the cpu is busy without enough ram it uses the hard drive for temp storage and that is very slow by comparison.

KidD01 · Post by **KidD01** » Mon Nov 29, 2004 10:46 am

[QUOTE=tom the terribl]You did not say how much ram you have but for a fast cpu it best to have at least 2gb or more. If the cpu is busy without enough ram it uses the hard drive for temp storage and that is very slow by comparison.[/QUOTE]

2 GB of RAM ??? *raise an eye brow* Do you have any suporting reason on that ammount ?

XP only require 256MB of RAM to work fine, thus system with 256MB + should be fine. Considering if you don't use any "resource eating program" i.e Autocad etc Or several programs running at same time i.e Photo editing program inconjuction w/ other prog like MS Excel or MS Visio. IMO 1GB of RAM already good enough - that is if you plan to use lots of multitasking.

On the swapping file progs, I recommend never mix those progs with other application unless you have lots of of resources (RAM and HDD space - the HDD space was ment for windows index file) Also on file indexing, if you have that progs running IMO it's not wise to set the file index size manually thus slowing your machine performance when the limit reached. It's best to let windows handle the index file unless you got lots of HDD space to spare. Example my PC mostly slowed if i got only 900MB space, but if i got 1 GB above free space it runs well again. Flibs also makes a point there. Setting your max connection too high also can reduce your machine performance, hence refer to the program help file or manual for the best setting.

Norton Anti Virus resident program also take resource quite big, same as McAfee. One antivirus I've tried that takes less resource is Eset Nod32. Firewall progs also eat up your resource - so choose them wisely.

As for spyware, yes they are evil

Those 2 proggie mentioned by Vic are good ones - just be sure to update it detection data regularly. Should you manage to got your PC infected it's wise to also check the registry, some of spyware write their own registry and must be removed manually from the system. Having windows set its roll back point also a good option

Xandax · Post by **Xandax** » Mon Nov 29, 2004 2:44 pm

I would normally recommend 512-1GB RAM for Windows XP machines. Above is not that much usefull for other stuff then what Kid# says - amongst others photoediting and such.

As for the Swap file - the only thing I would recommend about that is if you have the possiblity to place it on a different drive then what you utilize most (not partition - but drive) to increase the access speed.
Other then that - simply let Windows handle it for you.

tom the terribl · Post by **tom the terribl** » Tue Nov 30, 2004 4:53 am

2gb

I have printer files runing all the time.
I have Norton Internet Security running all the time.
I have Nortong Antivirus running all the time.
I have SoundMax running all the time.
I have MS Messsenger running all the time.
I have MS AutoUpdate running all the time.

I have about 712 DLL files running all the time.

My computer is using .45 GB while logged onto this site at this time.