Here's my specs: P4 2.4 ghz P4S333 Asus MoBo WinXP 512 MB DDRAM 60GB HD GeForce4 Mx420 VideoCard 29.42 Whenever I play a game with heavy 3d graphics my task mon. shows my cpu usage to be at 100%. After a couple of minutes of play, the game locks up and i have to reboot manually. I've tried updating BIOS, tweaking settings, switching to AGP 2x, turning off VSYNC, disabling fast write, checked DXDIAG-everything fine, updated drivers, reinstalled drivers, unseated card, tried a new card but that wouldnt work either, cleaned fan-running at 38 celsius. I've tried just about everything i can think of. i need help. thanks, Mike

I'm no tech, but I had a similar problem after an Evesham engineer replaced my faulty motherboard. After he'd finished he went away and I sat down with my PC only for it to start crashing ten minutes after start-up. When I looked in the BIOS, I saw that the CPU power supply was at 1.5v where previously it had always been 1.7v. I changed it and now, 14 months later I haven't had another CPU-related crash or freeze. Just an idea. :)

I have had several occurrences of this happening if you have a HP printer installed locally. If so, check your processes running and remove the HP ones to see if usage comes back down. If so remove and re-install printer.