100% Usage??! What??!!! Help!

[Element-Xero]

I checked my system monitor a minute ago and its reading 100% usage constantly. WTF? How can this be?

System is at 136*9.5 rest in sig.

running win 98

[NeoMoses]

i had that problem with norton. it was constantly wanting to defrag my HD, which slowed me down considerably.

why don't you let us know what software you have installed and what your hardware is? that would help us diagnose it better.

[TheCrow]

Are you running Seti or Folding@home?
If you are them your 100% usage is explained by that!
If not then you might have another program in the background that is using your resources!
Try pressing CTRL+ALT+END and ending any task that you dont know! Then try to run your system monitor again!

Hope it helps...

[Jon]

Any software CPU coolers like Rain, Waterfall, CPUIdle, etc. will also usually show 100% CPU usage as well.

[TheCrow]

Originally posted by Jon
Any software CPU coolers like Rain, Waterfall, CPUIdle, etc. will also usually show 100% CPU usage as well.

Really???:confused:

Didnt know that!!! (dont use it either)
I thought those kinds of programs were for cooling the CPU, not to overload it!

Anyway, thanks for the info, Jon!:)

[Hoot]

Originally posted by Jon
Any software CPU coolers like Rain, Waterfall, CPUIdle, etc. will also usually show 100% CPU usage as well.

That has not been my experience using halt-on-idle programs.

Hoot

[Thelemac]

*Moved to "Software and Operating Systems"*

[r_stripe]

On the note of cooling software and 100% utilization question.....if one ever so chooses to run cooling software, I dont because I run Seti 24/7 so its pointless for me. The reason for this is, When you run a program like rain or bla bla bla it uses 99 to 100% of the CPU and makes it run a continous thread that essentially "processes nothing" its a high priority nothing program. Only when another program is running and needs cpu time the program will alocate a percentage to that program to run.....sorta interesting, and it works......my cpu temp fell below my motherboards temp by 1 degree, but in a nut shell thats how it works...........it makes it do a whole lot of nothing. which is perfect for idle time, but who wants to idle their computer, GAME IT, OR SETI IT!!!!

[Element-Xero]

Well the first thing I did was close every prog except systray and explorer, before I even came here, and I'm not running Seti or Folding, and I also am not using any cooling software. But, even with systray and explorer only it showed 100% totally unfluctuatingly (word?) for about 30 minutes. So, I tried restarting and when windows booted, even with all my startup progs running, it was back to like 3-13%. Wierd, I guess....no harm done though.

Hey another wacky thing I noticed:
When I am not moving my mouse (Microsoft Intellimouse Explorer) the monitor reads about 15%ish and when I am moving it, it reads about 3%. Seems like it should be the other way around.

[Jon]

I used those programs probably close to 2 years ago and never again. They may not do this anymore but at the time all of the ones I tried consitently showed 100% CPU usage on the Resource Meter.

The meter was right as the programs simply hog the CPU to use HLT commands on it which is not actually utilizing the processor at all, it just shows up that way. It was a common bug at the time and more than likely has been fixed by then.

I'm speaking out my ass which is from the past on this matter...just thought maybe he got ahold of an older version (if using one) or another version that caused this problem.

[fuzzba11]

Are you running any sort of temperature monitoring program? When I run SmartGuardian, the monitor that came with my motherboard, I get 100% usage without fail, but in motherboard monitor I get regular idle useage. Might want to see if that's it, otherwise consider reinstalling windows or something!

[r_stripe]

Element,

Rebooting usually fixes, like you said and did, but keep an eye on things, you might have a sub7 trojan on yer system....sneaky as hell......and sometimes they will show up as a high utilization on yer cpu..........just what I gathered in some reading awhile back.....take it with a grain of salt, because im still researching the removal and avoidance of sub7 type programs.

[sciss]

Had the same problem lately. Nothing seems to run in the tasklist. I even checked all of the windows "run" registry and i didn't find anything special.

I wanted to download and run "The Cleaner" trojan remover but my web access wasn't working.

So i uninstall all the softwares that i can and the problem disappeared. It came back 3-4 days later.

I simply installed Windows 2000 on my second partition to bypass it. Everything is now fine. I will reinstall Win98 on my first partition soon if "The Cleaner" does see nothing.