Can someone tell me if this is normal?

I've attached a picture of the strange behaviour of my processor (an 18 month old dual core AMD 4400).

The inconsistency of its usage is a fairly regular occurance and at the time this screenshot was taken, I had no programs running (but 55 processes were running in the background). I don't even know if the behaviour of the processor(s) on that graph is good or bad but it sure looks bad.

The computer pretty much constantly runs slowly, regardless of how demanding the process I ask it to complete it.

For example right now, Internet Explorer is the only program open but when I open a Windows Explorer window and right click on a file, it takes a good five seconds for the menu options to appear - at least five!

Other things too. I open a program, even a simple one like Notepad, and it takes about 5 or 6 seconds to even show signs of opening.

With a program like Word or Excel, I'm looking at that plus another 4 or 5 as I wait for all the buttons at the top to appear and then the document itself to appear. It's just becoming a joke.

Internet Explorer or Outlook take up to 30 seconds to even appear on the screen and then sometimes up to a minute more before I can use them.

Often with Internet Explorer I open it, wait 30 seconds for it to open, then click on the address bar and as soon as I click it says "Not Responding" but if I just wait about 10 or 15 more seconds it works.

Occasionally, seemingly without reason, the computer works as it should, and I get excellent, instantaneous responses from things. So I know the computer can do it, but why doesn't it do that all the time?

Does anyone know?

Well, if you ain't been "morphed" (taken over by a cyberbot - unless your Firewall and Anti Virus is smack up to date), then I guess you've either got a rogue app running, doing absolutely nothing but consuming processor cycles, or:

Don't Know!

OK, well, I suggest this:

I assume you have the latest updates of all anti virus and Firewall stuff on board and running (assuming your machine is connected to the Internet)?

Yes?

OK.

Go to Start.

Run. Type in "MSCONFIG"

Go to the "Startup" tab. Click on "Disable all".

Go to the "Services" tab. Click on "Disable all"

Re - boot your machine.

It will start, then come up with a message saying "You've messed with my settings......."

Terminate it with extreme prejudice. (Click "Cancel")

See how the machine runs.

If this solves your problem, it's a background app loading you do not need.

If it doesn't, you have a more serious problem.

We'll take it from there.


CS

PS: It could be as simple as the "Sleep" mode set on the machine under "Power Management".

Never underestimate the power of Microsoft Windows to simply "do it's own thing" from time to time and change settings it shouldn't be able to change.

If it's spinning the hard drive(s) down too quickly, they take time to spin back up, and that will significantly increase program launch times.

Check that out as well.

Go to the "Startup" tab. Click on "Disable all".
Go to the "Services" tab. Click on "Disable all"

Thanks Chris,

Well, the machine did run significantly faster, however, nothing really worked. No sound played when I played an audio file, no web pages opened when I opened Internet Explorer.

So I changed them back to "Enable All" so that I could come on here and write this, but the thing has slowed considerably now.

So I hesitate to say it solved the problem because it made my computer relatively useless.

I assume now that I need to go through that list and enable the useful ones and disable the useless ones, right?

Thanks for your quick reply! I appreciate it.

-- John.

As opposed to "Dear John".....

Well, you have the gist. Enable one at a time, see what works, see what kills your machine. Time consuming in the extreme, but worthwhile in the long term.

If you go to the Adobe web site and choose either Premier Elements or any of their other Video apps, then dive into their Support forums, you'll find a shed load of usefull "white papers" on setting up a Windows machine for best running, no matter what software you are editing with.

Go to it.


CS