i need comp help

My CPU usage is near 100%, opening programs and searching in reallllly slow, any ideas, i have a dell with XP home. Should i deleat some cache, which one, and how do i do it?

Thanks in advance

How much RAM do you have?

Windows gets bloated really easily. It comes with a couple of utilities you could try - Disk Cleanup and Disk Defragmenter. Also, scan for viruses.

spware
adware
/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/frown.gif

Hmmm...

If you hit "Ctrl-Alt-Del", you´ll have the task-manager.

There you have on the 2nd tab from the left a list of all running processes, also showing which process consumes how much percentage of CPU-time.

Can you identify the one with the most hunger for CPU-time?

Seth

iexplorer.exe 30,928 k
explorer.exe 13,580 k
vsmon.exe 15,500 k
svchost.exe 20,464 k

256 of ram @ 1.79 ghz
pentium 4 @ 1.80 ghz

On this screwy work machine I have firefox.exe at 35,708k
expolere at 19,708k
no vsmon
and SEVERAL svchost...

1 at 1,472k
1 at 18,488k
1 at 1,496k
1 at 1,612k

I also have two of a couple other things, what's up with that?

Also 1.53ghz athlon xp 1800+ and 480ram

[ QUOTE ]
2000xlt said:
iexplorer.exe 30,928 k
explorer.exe 13,580 k
vsmon.exe 15,500 k
svchost.exe 20,464 k


[/ QUOTE ]

You´re almost there /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif

Those were the values for memory-consumption...

Just to the left of them is a column with values mostly showing "00". Those are the values for CPU-time each process uses.

On a "normal" system, the only major process consuming CPU-time is the "idle-process", who does what it says, nothing /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif

I suspect there is one process on your system that consumes a lot of CPU-time, and I doubt it´s the idleprocess.

Could you have a look?

Seth

P.S.: I just noticed your vsmon.exe consumes a lot of memory. This process belongs to ZoneAlarm ( I guess you have this firewall installed, true? ).
There are numerous reports that ZoneAlarm consumes 100% CPU-time on some computers. If it turns out your vsmon.exe process is the one who needs almost all of your CPU-time I´d suggest to uninstall ZoneAlarm and use another firewall instead.

You may have waaaaay to many programs loading at startup (clue: do you have a lot of little icons on the lower right corner of your Windows taskbar?). Try:

Start|Run...|msconfig (enter)
Select the Startup tab and uncheck all unnecessary programs. If/when in doubt, leave them on, or do a Google search to see what they do.

Either that or you have virus, spyware, etc. Run adaware and/or an antivirus.

The CPU column shows what's using the CPU. If you click on the "CPU" in the header it sorts the processes by this. It will put the heaviest user on the bottom or top depending on how many times you click.

system idle process is 98 and task manager is 2

You really SHOULD have more RAM for an XP machine. I was running slow on 256MB until I installed another stick of DDR-RAM. Just put another stick in. I bet it helps.

Also, just an fyi... Those memory usage numbers in task manager are not truly right. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif Never gauge a processes memory consumption using task manager.