Hey folks, I wanted to get an idea of what other people's cpu usage is. Recently I've been having problems with a super slow system and I wasn't sure what the deal was. On a relatively fresh install of windows (1.5 month old), it takes over 3 min to boot windows XP (hibernating 1-2 min). Loading an application takes several seconds. On loading windows welcome sound stutters like crazy. And running more than one application (firefox and email, or multiple firefox windows) consistently results in over 90% cpu usage. As a reference, just now I was watching "The Daily Show" on Firefox (only app open) on my ubuntu partition (8.04.1) and its taking up around 65%-75% cpu usage (on both cores?). When I do the same in windows I consistently hit >95%. If I try to watch hulu at medium or high quality video is totally jump and sound stutters a lot and system become really slow (its not a network issue for sure). This appears quite strange because the computer was working fine just 1 month ago (it did not have the above stated problems). No new applications or hardware has been installed in the last month (except windows updates). I have defragmented the hard drive, and also tested it for bad sector sectors using fdisk (or whatever the windows app is), and no issues or problems have appeared. Furthermore I have scanned for viruses and the drive appears clean. Previously boot times were extremely fast (less than 1 min) and I never had any problems loading programs. The only thing I could think is the CPU overheated - one night it was left running a cpu intensive program, and the laptop had somewhat limited air flow. (but I would expect random crashes if the cpu was bad) Sorry for the long post, but I wanted to know if this is normal? Could it be some random windows update that is killing me? Maybe I did install something but forgot. Hardware? Either way 3 min boot time is a bit ridiculous. Any thoughts? peace, boot
try starting windows with bootlog.txt (pressing F8 at the boot), then examine the bootlog and see if there are any error messages. Also, anything strange in the Event viewer? Have you got an antivirus installed by any chance?
I'm interested in this topic too. My CPU usage was roughly 80-99% a week or two back. I uninstalled Steam and it seemed to lower it to roughly 30-40% range, but whenever I start up it takes a few minutes and CPU usage still spikes up to more than half. Haven't been able to figure out why though as my AAO was very fast a few weeks ago. I too have iTunes so maybe that can be the culprit.
you open it up with a word processor.. or edit in msdos.. look for lines that say failed, or something similar..
My One was experienceng slower than I would like boot-up times, and after researching on the Netz, I found a program called bootvis. It is a Microsoft app, and has caused no problems with my machine. It reduced my boot times from 58 seconds to 28-29 seconds. It is a freedownload. I found it through this site, which is a guide to making XP as quick as it can be: http://www.connectedinternet.co.uk/2007 ... dows-xp/2/ That site has some other good utility links on it, too. I have not tried them all, as other than the slow boot-up, my machine is quick enough for my tastes. I have already had to restore it to default once. It sucked, and I am trying not to take chances with having to do it again. The way bootvis works is: Run program, and reboot. Upon rebooting, it shows a graphed report of how your machine is working during boot-up. Select optimise, and reboot again. After it finishes optimising, run trace program again, and reboot. This eport sshould be a vast improvement over the first time. You can optimise again to see if you can gain any further boost. Note: After defragging, you will have to redo this process to get it back to the ultimate quickness. Cheers! :geek:
