Over this past summer I built myself my very first gaming system, and I absolutely love it. However I have just recently run into a few problems that I hope I could have some help with.
First off, I have JUST installed a fresh copy of Windows 7 x64 on this system. This is ALL the programs and drivers installed at the moment. I can't imagine I have any malfunctioning software or malware.

1. rundll32.exe using cpu 'invisibly'.
If my computer idles with absolutely nothing running the cpu still seems to work rather hard. It hovers around 15-20%, which is a lot given that it is an i-7 2600k. Process explorer, task manager, and my cpu gadget all verify that this is happening, but when I go into procexp and sort by cpu, I estimate only about 2-4% cpu use is listed. System idle is at 96-98%. However, I have pinpointed that this is rundll32's fault, because if I suspend it then the cpu calms down to a nice 1%. While rundll32 is sucking at my performance svchost also seems to be busy doing something, but it stops once I suspend rundll32.
2. Audio device keeps resetting.
I have a Rocketfish Creative sound card (the cheap 5.1 one) and have my Logitech x540 system connected to it in 5.1. However, whenever I restart the computer the default audio device switches to my monitor (Samsung BX2331), even though my monitor doesn't even have speakers. Even it did it wouldn't matter, though, because it is connected by DVI, not HDMI. In addition to that all my settings for the card reset, such as the quality setting, the 5.1 setting, and the CMSS 3D setting. This happens even if I disable the monitor in the playback devices window. I don't remember this being a problem a few months ago...
That is all. Any help is greatly appreciated.
Thank you.