[jmiller99]

I have recently purchased a new Alienware Area 51 5500. Right out of the box, I noticed that the system seemed to "hang" for a few seconds every so often. I immediately checked Task manager and found out the SYSTEM process is consuming 50% of the CPU every 60-70 seconds, lasting for about 3 or so seconds. I have the Intel P4 3.4Ghz 2MB Cache HT CPU setting on an ABIT AA8XE 925XE motherboard with 1Gb RAM. I also have two SATA drives at RAID 0. For video, I have the ATI x850 Radeon Platinum Edition PCIExpress 256Mb
When I SAFE BOOT, the CPU still has the problem. When I use MSCONFIG and disable all non-MS processes and reboot, the CPU problem is still there. I have ran virus scan and spyware scans, nothing detected. I booted KNOPPIX, bypassing all Windows stuff, and the CPU showed normal - so, something in Windows XP is doing this I guess? I have done the Windows Memory Test and full hard drive analysis, but all tests came back normal.
Alienware off-shored all their tech support, so working with those folks is a bit slow and tedious. They had me perform a full system restore, and the problem is still there. We updated the BIOS and Chipset drivers - from Alienware's support site, not ABIT's. Still had the problem.

Any hints, ideas or clues? I've sunk a ton of money into this system. Restocking fee is 15%, or over $400! So I'd rather get this fixed. Any help would be appreciated...

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let's see if we can narrow it a bit

download process explorer from sysinternals
http://www.sysintern...ssExplorer.html

Unzip, run and go to VIEW in the menu and choose
show process tree
show processes form all users
show unnamed handles
show fractional CPU

you should get a heirarchal view of what's running with a cpu column

when SYSTEM spikes, you should see several processes in this column with numbers--your fractional cpu....what is taking up the cpu time?

[gerryf]

let's see if we can narrow it a bit

download process explorer from sysinternals
http://www.sysintern...ssExplorer.html

Unzip, run and go to VIEW in the menu and choose
show process tree
show processes form all users
show unnamed handles
show fractional CPU

you should get a heirarchal view of what's running with a cpu column

when SYSTEM spikes, you should see several processes in this column with numbers--your fractional cpu....what is taking up the cpu time?