can no one answer the question of why i am using so much cpu usage? 21 percent at startup 1100 mhz athlon xp home 512 mb ram 32 mb nvidia tnt2 m64 only apps running at startup is norton av 2002 and norton internet security 26 processes running help

look under your msconfig to see whats under services and startup.don't uncheck anything unless you know what your doing

disable norton, and retry

See wheather there are problems with identifying the cpu on the mainboard especialy if it is athlon XP

ok lets try this again. I am computer literate. So lets rule out msconfig and disabling norton and retry, or just in cause the ? of how many apps are you running. This is a more complex problem, the fluxuation of the cpu usage is almost not credible. It jumps from (when i hit ctrl alt del) 100 to 44 to 22 to 18 then hovers around 20/21 (these are just hypothetical numbers to show the flux.) This is with nothing running no apps just 26 services that i don't know what all of them are. And only thing running at startup ie msconfig is norton av and internet firewall.

hey man, i think u shud stop most of those services from running, u dont need half of them...that will bring down yer cpu usage considerably when u stop the services by right clicking and goin to properties, that u also make the startup type manual and NOT disabled otherwise u run into endless s--- ;p im not going to name all the services u dont need, but this shud help you http://www.3dspotlight.com/tweaks/winxp_services/index.shtml