MonitorWare Knowledge Base

[dbarne1]

Hi,

I have a weird problem that started to happen a week ago. Did nothing special. no new applications were installed, no new hardware, no new drivers.

When I download something from the internet, doesn't matter where from , what size , what nature ... the computer starts to consume about 50% CPU. looking at the task manager reveals nothing. 99% idle. Like there is something hidden taking up my CPU. This happens on downloads only and when I surf to a "complex" URL. the CPU will be 50% until the page if fully loaded.

I have a clean tidy computer, Mcafee suite 7, registry mechanic , AD-Aware now and then . I'm a computer technician myself so I really keep my computer safe and sound. firewall , antispam , you name it.

I have no clue where to start. I did a restore from a backup I had. Things went fine for several days. Then , again the problem returned.

XP professional , 512 MB , SP1 , enough swapping space on C drive. Disks working in Ultra DMA mode and not PIO. P2.4 Ghz. Strong video card (Nvidia 6XXX). A great computer. But this problem drives me crazy. The downloads by the way are fast. It's the computer that consumes CPU for I don't know what.

Any idea ???

Thanks,
Doron.

[alorbach]

If CPU wents high but you can't see it in Taskmanager, it's something which runs in the kernel context = usually a service or driver.

So my guess is that something is hooked into your browser process and causes this problem. To verify disable your Firewall, AntiVirus and so on, and check if the problem persists.

best regards,
Andre Lorbach

[dbarne1]

Will try. Thanks.