OS: Windows XP My cpu usage gets really high, just for a stupid process like moving the mouse rises up to 70%, and with other applications it's at 100%. The HDD led is always on, not even twinkling. The funny thing is that I have Win98 in another partition and it works fine.

close all open programs or do fresh reboot and then go to start/run/ type in the following: Rundll32.exe advapi32.dll,ProcessIdleTasks This frees up the programs so you can run what you want. You will need to look into disabling some programs on startup if this becomes an ongoing problem.

Might be a virus. If you don't have any anti-virus software installed, and want to check, you can get a free, online scan at... http://housecall.trendmicro.com/ Else, check Processes and see what is eating up the most of your CPU resources. Start, Run then type in taskmgr --> Processes Tab and check Performance tab. If taskmgr closes (due to lack of CPU resources) prematurely, you can try Start, Run then type in msconfig Go to the Services tab... If you have any mystery *.exe (executable) files running, try killing them then rebooting. Try the virus scan first. Good luck.

RobbieD: Thanks for your help. But I don't have anything on startup, just windows messenger. And I don't have any other resident program software running at the time. The CPU usage increases unexpectedly even when there's nothing running that may cause that.

Sorry, I meant resident running tasks in the background. Administrative Tools/Services For example you can disable indexing, which uses like 50%, nvidea helper, and workstation if you dont need that one most ppl dont.

Some maybe's: I believe RobbieD is talking about some of the programs that you see running when you hit Ctrl-Alt-Del, Processes tab. Not the StartUp folder. May sound weird, but try different graphics card drivers, the newer drivers aren't always the best for your configuration. If running old drivers, try new. If new, try older versions. Check the Event Viewer for a clue as to what the problem may be. (control panel, Admin tools, Event Viewer) Go to http://www.pcpitstop.com and run "full test". LL

I ran AVG anti virus and found out I had more than 600 files infected with win32/funlove virus. Although AVG made a complete healing, the problem persists. I think maybe it was too late... Thanks anyway