When CPU usage isn't 100%, system is slow

T

The Hockster

Gawd
Joined
Oct 27, 2002
Messages
909
What I mean by that is when you go to the Task Manager normally CPU usage starts at 100% for a second then goes to what it should be. But my problem is whenever I do certain things these days my system starts to go really slow, such as after I play an intensive game or even when I leave a few files downloading over night. Apps take a while to load for example when I return to the computer. I can tell when the computer is going to act like this by simply going to the Task Manager and seeing if the CPU usage starts at 100% or not. Quite often it starts at 89% or another lower number, and that means things are slow for a while - I think it is the HDD been slow.

I don't know if I've explained the situation well enough, but I think it is a problem which all computer users have to put up with, as the same things happen to my brother's computer. What is it exactly?

Is there anyway to stop the number of times this happens, I think it is to do with the HDD been worked to hard or something, but I don't know.
 
how good is your cooling? that's something to check into. dust your comp and check temps (just feel it, you don't need an actual thermometer). if your stuff is getting too hot, i'd look into some cooling solutions.

also, it seems dumb, but dust severely slows your comp more than you'd think. i'm guessing it has to do with it holding in heat, but i'm not sure.
 
Well I reformatted a few months ago and that hasn't stopped in happening. I think it is to do with Windows loading back data into RAM from the slow swap file. A good example of this is when I finish playing UT2003 and the desktop wallpaper takes a few seconds to load back up and I can hear my HDD loading like crazy. Same thing happens to my mIRC, all the text and windows load back slowly, but that only happens in the worse case situations, but it does happen.

I'll open my case and do a bit of cleaning tonight too. :)
 
If you're getting this happening after you play games, it because you only have 512mb of RAM :).

1GB is the way to go. I had some problems with UT2k3 when I only had 512MB of RAM. The game itself would stutter a lot, and once I got out of the game, windows would run like ass as it cached everything back from HD into memory.

Cheers,

Mr. Pain

-- Ick, noticed you're running RDRAM.. .blah =P
 
More memory can never hurt you. Most of the time thats the main problem your system, you're just out of memory. But like other people posted, watch out for cooling problems, too.
 
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