CPU running at 55 to 70% usage when idle 1

[chriski]

After booting the PC in the morning the CPU is running on 1 to 3% usage when idle.
After a few minutes the CPU usage is going up to 70 and never below 55% when idle.
I’m getting concerned about heat stress for the CPU, the cooling fan and the MBO as well as for my ears as the cooling fan is working flat out all day.

Stopping all background programs makes little difference.
In Task Manager / Processes the offending Process seems to be “System Idle Process” giving a fluctuating CPU reading between 95 and 99

Pentium 2.8Ghz 800Mhz
ASROCK P4I65GV Intel 865 Mainboard

Some help will be much appreciated

Thanks - Chris

 

[Jump1ng]

You want the System Idle Process to be as high as possible as its showing that your CPU is idle.

What process do you have that is using a lot of resources? I take it you havent installed any kind of distributed cracking client? That will use idle cpu cycles to do it's work.

If you haven't installed anything it could be a very high chance that you have a virus or spyware infected your machine.

I would recommend you to update your antivirus software and do a full scan. Then download Spybot SD and Adaware which are spyware removal tools and let them scan your machine.

http://www.safer-networking.org/en/index.html

http://www.lavasoftusa.com/software/adaware/

If you are a bit worried about running these software, try and find the name of the process that is using the cpu and post it here and some one should be able to tell you if its a bad process or just normal windows ones.

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Make the best use of what is in your power, and take the rest as it happens.

 

[bcastner]

100% - Busy Processes% = Idle Process%

An idle process of 95-99% means your computer is busy doing something for between 5% to 1% of its capacity.

The excellent freeware Process Explorer by Sysinternals will show you what Process and DLLs are using your computer:

http://www.sysinternals.com/ntw2k/freeware/procexp.shtml

A search/cleanup of possible malware would be a good idea. See faq608-4650

In addition, you might take you computer to the shop. The procesor heatsink/fan might not be seated properly. The bearings in a fan might be going bad and become noisy.

For heat concerns, nothing is better than Motherboard Monitor, excellent freeware:

http://mbm.livewiredev.com/