Gridlock Mikey

XP home edition
I log on, open task manager and the cpu useage hovers around 0-5% I open Windows Media Player (V10) and do nothing else and after about 2 mins the cpu useage climbs upto 90+% although I'm not doing anything. If I play one of the playlists, it's ok for half a song and then whoosh up goes the useage and the whole computer slows down to a crawl. WMP isn't THAT greedy is it?

Any Ideas?

bioforger

iTrader: (1)

It is quite ram intesive yes, but u should only get cpu load when actually playing something, but not 90%+, what spec is your pc?

Gridlock Mikey

*Reads label stuck on front of machine*

Pentium 4 3.0GHz
512 DDR RAM
120GB 7200 rpm
DVD Rewriter
16 x DVD-ROM
9800XXL 128Mb DDR-RAM memory. Graphics card with DVI-I
Wireless LAN Mini PCI card (802 11G)
Stereo TV Radio tuner card
Remote control

There ya go

Don't tell me..... PANTS

wayne9t9

Out of curiosity I just tried doing as you did. The cpu usage for wmplayer went up to 100% while the programme opened then calmed down to about 5-10% while it was running minimised.Full screen it goes up to about 60%. My PC is about the same spec as yours. Are you sure its wmplayer causing the prob?

mannyo

My guess is a mediaplayer plugin is causing a problem. Have you tried selecting another visualisation to see if thats the cause of the problem.

Gridlock Mikey

Getting right hacked off now!!

I un installed WMP completely and after rebooting, opened the task manager and just left it and watched. Sure enough up it climbed even though the PC wasn't doing anything.

I did notice in the processes tab that the explorer.exe was flying about using between 73,000k and 135,000k of memory. Absolutely no idea what is normal but it seems that my PC is doing something in the background and it's this "something" that is eating up my processing speed and making the PC seem like its a Sinclair ZX81!!

I have de fragged and gotten rid of all my **** from the hard drive and moved all of my music to disc so essentially I have nothing on the PC that could slow it down. I have removed all games and ran every piece of spy ware ad ware etc and they say the system is clean.

I also restored to a previous life and that didn't help.

Apart from re formatting and re installing XP any other ideas?

No Fcukin Idea

Iain Young

Hmm, explorer is only using 21,504k of memory on my machine. It sounds as though there may be something else running which is using the memory. Have you tried sorting the list by CPU and seeing which process is using the most cycles?

Leg@cy

iTrader: (2)

I had EXACTLY the same problem last week....


CPU = 100% more or less.... and Explorer.exe in running at anything up around 130,000k

Ran spybot/adaware and virus scan... nowt...

have you tried a restore ??

phil

Gridlock Mikey

I restored to a point at the beginning of MAY.

Have you sorted yours out yet?

Dave_A

Try downloading Process Explorerer from sysinternals, it may give you some idea about whats running on your machine and using up CPU more accuratly than the windows taskmanager..

I've used it before to track and kill redundant processes that refused to die.

worth a shot possibly. YMMV.

Dave

Vonzack

Don't forget to check other usual culprits:

Virus Checkers - Could be doing a scheduled scan of files on your PC
Windows / Office - Could be the Find Fast tool trawling through your disk creating the search database

Start your machine, load TaskMan and when the processor usage climbs, use the processes tab to see which program is using all the CPU time (look at the CPU column). Then tell us which one it is.

Cheers.

Gridlock Mikey

System Idle process is taking up 80-95 in the CPU column but it's only using 16k of memory.

Gridlock Mikey

Also it's saying that I have 48 processes going on 5 of them are called svchost.exe, none are using CPU but all 5 are using memory ranging from 3,420k upto 24172k. So whats svchost.exe?

Iain Young

Have a look here...

http://www.neuber.com/taskmanager/pr...chost.exe.html

Gridlock Mikey

Thanks for that


I've identified a file that I cannot delete. When I opened the folder that the file was in, the CPU useage went ballistic. I have tried to delete the file but it says that the file is in use. It's not! I can't move it, open it explore it anything. But whenever I try to do anything with it, the CPU goes mad and I have to wait 30 seconds until the PC unfreezes.

I reckon I've downloaded a lurgie within the file. It was just some footage of Petter Solberg doing some Rally stuff, but who knows what it really is

I have ad awared, spy botted and virus checked and it's all showing clear.

Any ideas how I can delete this file? Remember I'm no PC wizz

Iain Young

What's the name of the file?

Gridlock Mikey

Petter Solberg.avi

bioforger

iTrader: (1)

How much ram have u got? and is your swap file set to auto or manually set to a certain amount. Might be worth moving your swap file to another partition other than c:\ to, and times your ram by 3 n divide by 2 to get the minimum/maximum size to set for it. i.e for 1gig of ram my swapfile size is set to 1,536mb.

Check msconfig for any unwanted startup processes and remove.
Run MS antispyware/adaware apps n remove anything they find.

HTH

Iain Young

Just a thought, but when you have an avi in a directory, and you use windows explorer to navigate to that directory, doesn't it try and generate a thumbnail of the first frame or so?

You could try deleting it from the command line.

• Ensure windows explorer is not open
• Choose run from the start menu, and enter cmd.exe
• Navigate to where you have stored the file
  • c:
  • cd \someplace
• Dete the file
  • del "Petter Solberg.avi"

Hopefully that should let you delete it.

Gridlock Mikey

Anyone up on DOS text?

I've gone into the dos box and it says C:\Documents and settings\Mikey and the cursor is blinking away. I don't know how to navigate to the solberg avi from there. If I type C: or c: or type the path it just tells me that it's not recogniosed as an internal or external command and that i'm a techno retard

*Ten minutes of faffing about typing inane command text later*

That said, I've managed to get to the right place i.e the "My Downloads" folder but I can't get it to recognise the Solberg file. If i type in cd\Petter.Solberg.avi it tells me that *Arnie Terminator voice* "The system cannot find ze path specified"

It's gotta be a syntax thing so what should i be typing?

Ta

Anyone bored yet

bioforger

iTrader: (1)

del = delete

del "Petter Solberg.avi"

CD is change directory, which u dont want

Hanslow

Neh, keeping me quite entertained

You could always boot into safe mode and see if you can delete it that way.

Trashman

There is a bug in XP which does exactly this if you have a large AVI file. Something to do with it tries to load the whole thing into memory even if you just click on the icon but don't actually open it.

Re: the "other" activity, I'm betting indexing service, virus checker, loadds of other possibilities - many only run when there is no activity. Does the activity ease of if you wiggle the mouse? (except the .avi bug above - that sucks up activity for ages)

Gridlock Mikey

Always a pleasure

Yes I have tried the safe mode method and I get the same message, "File in use so **** off"

So this bug then any fixes for it that you know about?

Hanslow

Does this help squire?

I take it noone has trained you in the art of google-ing yet?

Gridlock Mikey

Cheers dude, will try tonight

Incidentally, how can you look on google to solve a problem when you don't know what it's called

I know i'll just type in CPU useage rockets and I think it's got sopmething to do with a large avi. file.

JayBee

OK

Another one to check - my PC has been running slow for ages - been through all the virus/adware programs and posssibilities. Even changed from norton 2005(internet Security) to Mcafee and back. Reloaded XP pro several times after complete partition delet and format. Still running slow with eratic system idle process. Killed everythig I could and to no avail.

What was it?...........one of the systeme fans was dodgy and overheating part of the chipset on the motherboard! The Nothbridge fan to be exact. I have installed system monitoring and replaced the fan and it is like a greased weasel! Only really pointed to this as it has been very bad the last couple of days in the hot weather.

There you go - look into that as a possibility

JB

Gridlock Mikey

*Slaps forehead* Doh!!! Is the list endless

Hanslow

Well at the point where you were told there was a bug with AVI files in XP, I googled for "bug XP avi" which seemed to do the trick

From what JayBee says, if you get something like Motherboard Monitor (I'll let you google for it ) it'll allow you to monitor certain aspects of your machine, but will introduce a slight overhead to let you know what's going on (albeit not very much overhead).

PCs are great aren't they No wise cracks from the Apple crowd please

Gridlock Mikey

RESULT Its bladdy gone and the task manager is now showing the CPU being "normal"

How the hell is joe normal meant to find a bleedin file in a place called Procserver32. I've been in files on my PC now that I never knew existed Don't think i'll be as blasey about re booting etc just by turning the plug off

Thanks for all your help Hanslow et al

One more question,

"Windows Media Player cannot play the file. One or more codecs required to play the file could not be found."

Totally different file

Does that mean the file just hasn't got them or does it mean my system doesn't have them? Where do I find out?

*Looks about the Computer related forum and notices that Hanslow's "Apple" comment hasn't been challenged