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Vista CPU usage always 50% or above


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#1
BluePoet

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I did a clean install of Windows Vista, and then crashed it installing an incompatible driver, which would give me a BSOD on start-up every time (stupid me). I installed Vista again, moving my now-defective install to Windows.old. I did not format the drive because I did not want to lose the photos / music that was not backed up anywhere else.

After attempting to save my old user account files by copying them over, my CPU usage now never drops below 50%, and sometimes randomly spikes to 100% for a second before jumping back down. This percentage fluctuates little when I run programs, and seems to be the default usage at idle speed, which it was not before the re-install. I don't understand what is causing this. When I go into task manager, it shows the System Idle Process accounts for most of the CPU usage.

Any suggestions?
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#2
AnthonyJ

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when you are going by your cpu load, what are you reading it from? task manager? a sidebar gadget? a program like pc wizard? im running a 1.8ghz celeron OCed at 2.03ghz and its usually around 10%. i see you are on a dual core, it should do better than my celeron :whistling:
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#3
BluePoet

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Sidebar gadget. Could it be inaccurate?
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#4
AnthonyJ

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i tried the sidebar gadget and i cant keep it still long its always above 40% on mine
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#5
SuperSam

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This is because the process you are running is only designed for use with a single processor. Meaning that it cannot use both of the cores for the single application, as the program is not coded this way. Shooting up to 100% will be another process fully using the other core.
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#6
warriorscot

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ok im going to ask the basic question, is there actually any slow down, if there isnt ignore it its always going to be using your CPU doing one thing or another.
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#7
BluePoet

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Not really anything noticeable yet, with the exception of AVI playback on full-screen mode in Media Player. Then again, that could be related to poor quality video, or just the fact that Media Player 11 sucks. I seem to do better playing the files in Nero.

To tell the truth, this being a clean install on a new computer, I don't have that much running on there yet. I guess I should just get rid of the sidebar, stop worrying, defrag the hard drive after getting rid of Windows.old, and stop thinking about it. Hopefully liquid cooling keeps things under control if the thing really is cranking away as fast as the sidebar says.
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#8
Logic_Overflow

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I'm going to assume it wasn't a 100% clean installation. If you have windows.old, that means you didn't format your harddrive and it moved all the old OS Windows files to Windows.Old.

I did have a CPU usage problem that always was over 50% and a bit of a slow down here and there. I simply reinstalled the OS and that got rid of that problem for me.
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#9
BluePoet

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You're right, only the initial install (which I crashed) was clean. Would the old one still be affecting me? Strangely, now CPU usage is much lower, but spikes randomly during fits of HDD activity. Hopefully the defrag will help (still haven't done it).
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