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Alright. I'm a huge fan of Vista and after 2 years of peace, it's slowly dragging down.
The CPU Usage is constantly above 30%, look at the task manager screenshot below. The strange thing is, I'm not doing anything different than I did, say, last year. The programs running are generally the same and the CPU usage was always under 10%.



I've ran 3 different virus/malware scans: NOD32, AVG, and Malwarebyte's. They found nothing, except 1 weak trojan, but that's all. The computer is still functioning at the same speed. Anyone have any tips? I was thinking about re-installing Vista completely, but I don't really want to do that.

EDIT: Here's my computer specs: HP a6118x

If you got NOD32, kill AVG and use NOD32.
http://www.blackviper.com/WinVista/servicecfg.htm

Configure the services to the "safe" settings there. It speeds up my systems. Also, try disabling things like animating windows and menus. It speeds up the PC a little bit too, (not just graphically).

how much shit do you have open in firefox?

um...?

20% of that 34% is from Itunes, 3% from task manager, and 1% from windows explorer. the other 10% probably isn't too much to worry about. If I move my mouse around quickly, my CPU goes up 7%.

Windows Vista uses 10000000000000 svchost files to do random system stuff on your computer, and it's pretty normal for your CPU to constantly go up and down from 0 - 10%. (if you do nothing, it should go from 0 - 3 ish, occasionaly spiking for a second, but doing pretty much ANYTHING will put it over 10%.)

If you're worried, tell it to sort by CPU usage and see which processes are using up CPU. Also, type msconfig in run and google any startup tasks or services that seem unusuall.

EDIT: You could always try the system restore if you've set a restore point. (it says it doesn't affect files, but I still don't trust it). ((Vista is SUPPOSED to automatically put a restore point when you first load it, but guess what, it doesn't.))

EDIT AGAIN: If you're running the sidebar on Vista, that could do it. Ironically, when I put the CPU meter on it, my CPU goes up 5 - 10 %. I just removed sidebar.

Even the best antiviruses can't catch everything.

Run HijackThis, perhaps? Also, have you defragmented your hard drive recently?

I'll start downloading HiJack This in a bit. I did defragment a little while ago and noticed little change. Could the culprit be that I shrunk my Vista partition by 15 gigs?

It shouldn't be the resize. HijackThis is definitely a good idea. Tons of things tend to start background tasks without your knowledge, often for no real reason. iTunes, for example, may be running up to 3 backgrond processes even when it's not not actually open.

Post a screenshot that actually shows the 10% you're worried about. We can't tell you what's wrong when the only processes with CPU are the ones you have open.

Exüberance wrote:Post a screenshot that actually shows the 10% you're worried about. We can't tell you what's wrong when the only processes with CPU are the ones you have open.

What 10%? I just meant to say that when my computer was running fine, it was under, or around 10% in terms of CPU usage. Now it's constantly above 30%.

I'll bring the Hijack This log here later, I'm on my XP computer right now, which ironically has 50%+ CPU usage but it's effin' fast.

Your screenshot suggests iTunes is using 20% CPU. Is that not the answer?

maestro wrote:Your screenshot suggests iTunes is using 20% CPU. Is that not the answer?

Well I've always been running iTunes and never noticed lag on my computer before.

The newer versions of iTunes have been known to be resource-hungry.

87654321 wrote:The newer versions of iTunes have been known to be resource-hungry.

No, no, the correct statement would be 'all versions of iTunes from 5 on are rather resource hungry' (we are now on 8)

Well, I only use iTunes because it syncs with my iPod and I have yet to discover another somewhat-good media player that syncs with it as well as iTunes does. Songbird does shit and just messed up the ID3 data on my songs. D:<

Techno wrote:Well, I only use iTunes because it syncs with my iPod and I have yet to discover another somewhat-good media player that syncs with it as well as iTunes does. Songbird does shit and just messed up the ID3 data on my songs. D:<

Don't you love Apple and vendor lock-in?

Hardware
Base processor
Pentium E2140 (C) 1.6 GHz

^^^ I'm honestly surprised that your CPU wasn't doing that ages ago while running Vista. I mean hell my CPU is about twice yours and I average out at 10 - 15%. Oh and integrated graphics won't be helping either.

Luminaflare wrote:Hardware
Base processor
Pentium E2140 (C) 1.6 GHz

^^^ I'm honestly surprised that your CPU wasn't doing that ages ago while running Vista. I mean hell my CPU is about twice yours and I average out at 10 - 15%. Oh and integrated graphics won't be helping either.

It's Dual Core. ;-;

Techno wrote:Well, I only use iTunes because it syncs with my iPod and I have yet to discover another somewhat-good media player that syncs with it as well as iTunes does. Songbird does shit and just messed up the ID3 data on my songs. D:<

Throw away windows and get amaroK.

SlappyMcGee wrote:

Techno wrote:Well, I only use iTunes because it syncs with my iPod and I have yet to discover another somewhat-good media player that syncs with it as well as iTunes does. Songbird does shit and just messed up the ID3 data on my songs. D:<

Throw away windows and get amaroK.

I already triple boot Vista, XP, and Ubuntu (in which amaroK is located).

Techno wrote:Well, I only use iTunes because it syncs with my iPod and I have yet to discover another somewhat-good media player that syncs with it as well as iTunes does. Songbird does shit and just messed up the ID3 data on my songs. D:<

http://www.simplehelp.net/2007/07/08/10 ... your-ipod/
iTunes is only good for the store (which is now DRM-free!). I've long used WinAMP, myself.