my computer was working perfectly for about a month, and in the past week or so, I've been getting wierd cpu usage spikes when using anything on my computer. It'll be resting at around 0%-3% usage, and then when I open up ANY program, or even scroll down a page sometimes, it'll spike up to 100% and then back down. This wouldn't be annoying but the fact that my internet stops responding sometimes because of it is the reason for my grievances. (I'm guessing this is the cause) Anything I use that's connected to the internet, such as games, and live update for norton, and outlook express remain connected (I use comcast cable) but aol, and any internet explorer I'm using seems to not work till I restart. I took my box to school and connected there through the lan, and I get the same problems, so the cable internet isn't the cause. It's NOT any virus, trojan, spyware or anything like that, I've run about 7 different proggies checking for anything, and nothing's detected. Any ideas plz?

I am having the same problem. Do not know when mine started but in addition to that, if I leave my computer on all night the next morning my cpu usage went from 215 mgb to 830 mgb without any apps running. Need to shutdown to clean up. This has just recently started. Need help please.

I had a simlar prob with my comp, only a restart would sort it, I then found a nice little program called tweak xp, this optimizes the cpu, and frees lots of memory and tweaks a whole load of stuff, now i can leave my machine on 24/7 with no probs, if ur not using xp, there are plenty of proggies that do the same job, just do a search for "tweak ??" ?? being ur Operating System.

it's not freeing up memory i need help with though, i have 768 mb sdram...i have plenty...there's something wrong that i need to fix...