I've read previous posts and agree with the excessive CPU utilization with Vista I've installed Vista Ultimate 64 Bit, Vista Office 64 Bit, Vista Home Premium 64 Bit and Vista Home Premium x86 and all show random CPU usage exceeding 70% plus just by moving the cursor across a hyperlink. When the usage gets high the system stalls (5-10 Secs)and there is no way to tell which process is causing it. By the time the CPU usage allows for display of bad process the problem is gone. Indexing is off and no additional programs are installed. I have read earlier posts that indicate that I am not alone. Has anyone found a solution? Thanks for your help

"I've read previous posts and agree with the excessive CPU utilization with Vista" What previous threads - certainly not mattie's..........LOL "I've installed Vista Ultimate 64 Bit, Vista Office 64 Bit, Vista Home Premium 64 Bit and Vista Home Premium x86 and all show random CPU usage exceeding 70% plus just by moving the cursor across a hyperlink." I am hesistant to believe all of the above is actually not an exaggeration, I mean c'mon dude - you tried 4 separate installations. FYI. I have the A64 3400+ (S754) @ 2.22Ghz on this machine & I've got at least 10 sidebar gadgets running, two firewalls, Windows Defender, WLOC & at the same time Dreamscene chugging away as the desktop background, all for a total of some 59 processes silently creeping at my CPU & the average usage is roughly @ 62%. I find your emotional appeal a little unconvincing. How To Ask Questions The Smart Way

no sh*t ... only 62%? LOL i should praise the Lord and be grateful for explorer.exe ONLY sucking constantly 2% out of my cpu rather than suspecting some sinister conspiracy :-) still, sacrifying almost 2/3 of your CPU power for the operating system doesn't leave you with much resources for 'real world' computing or great gaming experience, does it?. Today's subliminal thought is: 'Calm down ... it's only ones and zeros.'

I'm hoping (desperately!) that this sort of issue is soon eliminated with the release of better drivers.

regarding the matter at hand: IMHO the 'out of the box' Vista experience isn't exactly a great one for experienced users or performance freaks (not much of a difference here to previous versions of windows). blame it on Microsoft's 'one fits all' policy (i know, there are different versions of vista available, but that's not the point). bloated to the maximum to make it look a better deal, little or no customization during the installation, no efficient tweaking documentation (do whatever you want, but do it at your own risk), a ridiculous user control (the arrogant assumption: we know what's best for you), et cetera pp, the list goes on and on. with winndows 9x at least you had the choice whether you want effin' solitaire on your computer or not! :-) i'm not asking for something extreme like gentoo (build your own modular OS) but maybe different boot profiles (what to you want Windows to be: just look nice? optimized for: gaming? multimedia? productivity? (someone here remembers the good old gaming boot floopy? gosh, we had a great time with emm386.exe to squeeze the very last byte of memory out of DOS:-) instead they give you something that can do it all (none of it very good, but at least we've tried :-) i've been posting about this before: if you want to personalize your vista installation have a look at vLite (it offers plenty of pre-installation tweaks) and then look up various windows service guides and start tuning Vista to your likings. Today's subliminal thought is: 'Calm down ... it's only ones and zeros.'

"no sh*t ... only 62%? LOL" It's actually not as severe........if I might add, Defender was actively running (scanning) at full load in the background when I posted that last night. And not unexpectedly, a comparable CPU usage would have been observed if WLOC was actively scanning too. With both or either of those two idling in the background, the average usage actually is about 30%, I am normally ambivalent regarding issues of spikes here & there with the CPU usage & insofar as I can identify the culprit responsible for it & deduce an acceptable explanation for the spike, I am OK with it. Afterall, most CPUs spend the majority of "time served" doing absolutely nothing but sitting there & just waiting for some "work" to come along, so a little chew toy for the CPU doesn't really bug me. Now, if the behavior (CPU uasage) of any background or non-background application isn't acceptable or just ourightly deplorable, that program gets binned - easy as that. However, I would like to note that, I would not call this my ideal Vista machine, even though the OS forerun so far insinuate a false assurance of the machine holding its own quite reasonably, but I would prefer something that does more than holding its own after loading numerous day-to-day productivity utilities on it. Normatively, every major Windows release obsolesces preceeding hardware to a great degree & Vista isn't going to be an exception, more importantly since it took M$ that long to get it out of the door. But every now & then few users take exception to this approach & retain the hardware matrix long after a major OS upgrade, which isn't a big deal insofar as the hardware is more than capable of supporting & validating meaningful productivity within the new OS. How To Ask Questions The Smart Way

"But every now & then few users take exception to this approach & retain the hardware matrix long after a major OS upgrade, which isn't a big deal insofar as the hardware is more than capable of supporting & validating meaningful productivity within the new OS." That's mos circular argument I've read in months. LoL. We keep our old printers even though we should throw them out because it's a new OS. But what the heck we'll keep them because they still work. Anyway, Sabertooth, I meant no harm. But I have clients who still use old printers and scanners that were bought for Win98 and many still work under XP. Not everyone can afford to buy new hardware every 5 years or with a new OS. Some people carry this to an extreme, but most simply do not have the money to replace everything and MS efforts to force everyone into a new OS by not supporting previous tools is really a pushy marketing method. Especially when the new OS is not a substantial improvement over the previous one. Larry Sometimes I think I understand everything, then I regain consciousness