BleepingComputer.com: CPU runs too high even on idle in Vista

Dear friends,

Last night I was chatting with my brother on webcam and noticed very very poor performance that I never had experienced. The audio was garbled and kept freezing. I noted that my CPU consumption was 100%. That is the basis of my problem. Even at rest when nothing is going on, the meter swings up to 100% and down to 40% etc. My friends laptop hangs out at 0%.

I thought it may be malware so I ran my Norton AV and Malwarebytes. Didn't find anything. I (probably erroneously) tried to use a registry cleaner and a program called optimize. Neither worked...same problem.

I go to look and see what seems to have the highest percentage of use, and it seems to be taskmgr.exe, dwm.exe, sidebar.exe and explorer.exe...not to mention all the other programs, but those seem to be the big ones.

What am I doing wrong? What can I do to see exactly what the problem is? I know that some spyware runs in the backround that taskmgr.exe wont' pick up but scans have been negative.

I ran an Hijack this file as well, but an automated reader didn't find any issues.

My CPU monitor just seems too high. How do I know if there is a problem with software, registry, or actual hardware? I am watching my meter now and it jumps from 8 to 60%.

If anyone can help me out on the right foot, I would be very grateful Thanks!

Mike in St. Louis

I have noticed with vista if my ram runs a bit on the high side a reboot can bring it down a bit but if the same would hold true for cpu running high I dont know.I have solved a lot of glitches in the past though simply by restarting the thing.Might be worth a shot.

I rebooted a dozen times.

Check your Event Viewer for errors (eventvwr.msc)
Check the Reliability Monitor for errors (perfmon.msc)
Check the Performance Monitor report for problems (perfmon /report)

Enable the viewing of IO Reads and IO Other in the Processes tab of Task Manager and see if you can find any more info out.