Anyone know why I would be getting occasional blips of high CPU usage?

90% of the time my computer chugs along at 30-40% CPU usage (even when viewing WMVs) but occasionally it peaks for 5 seconds or so at 100%). And this is without me doing anything.

I've run the various usual anti-spam / anti-virus checkers and the memory checks out. I think if I'd cooked my CPU it would show as artefacts not pauses.

But it's really annoying, especially when watching videoes as suddenly the videos pauses then goes fast forward until the video catches up with the audio.

Not good.....

try defragmenting your hard drive.
also full or nearly full HD will slow a pc right down. if possible have 1 HD for operating system, 1 HD for program files/documents.

sadly best way to restore performance to an (ageing?) pc is to format the HD and do a fresh install.

edit: a relatively cheap and easy way to improve performance is to install more ram, just make sure its the same spec (google cpu-z if your unsure).

not sure why your pc would slow right down. but would suggest it is HD/temporary file related if it has a sudden burst of energy when either the temporary files folder becomes full and it has to make space to keep writing (if your streaming video) or is ram related, have you tried closing other back ground programs? as you have said spyware etc will demand system resources, hence why formating can be a good idea, it also kills all those junk programs u installed and never use...

phew long edit


[Edited on 7/9/10 by mrwibble]

Indexing?

Go to "Task Manager - processes and click on "Cpu" till it sorts by most active on top which if you watch it for a while should show you which processes are active and grabbing the CPU and then search for that process on the net to find out what it does.

Turn indexing off on all drives

Cool a few things to try then.

RAM- 2GB sitting there mostly doing nothing
HD- well fragmented, 3 in the system, 1 OS, 2 data.

I agree a fresh install might be the answer.

When I've checked what's hogging the CPU it seems to be WMP11 but occasionally firefox starts doing it...

I'll try getting rid of indexing....