cpu/disk usage always at 100%?

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tamethegamer

tamethegamer

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Apr 14, 2014
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My laptop is driving me crazy!

This is a 1 and a half year old Toshiba Satellite C850- 1D2. It has a 64bit OS with the curse of a pre installed Windows 8.

CPU= Intel Pentium B960 @2.2GHz.
RAM = 4GB DDR3
Disk= Hitachi + lots of irrelavant numbers and letters

Even running chrome (which I understand is demanding at times) with 2 or 3 tabs open seems to push this thing hard?! Its making lots of noise!!

According to the Task Manager, the CPU is often hitting 100% usage as is the disk usage (but not at the same time) and memory usually is steady at around 70/80%.

There are LOTS of "processes" happening according to the Task Manager but I am not sure what these are and have been told it is dangerous to end these.
Norton Internet Security seems to be taking up a large percentage of this. (I'm not on any unusual sites)
HARDWARE UPGRADES ARE NOT AN OPTION- why should they be? This is practically a new laptop.

HARDWARE UPGRADES AREN'T AN OPTION- why should they be, this laptop is practically new!

HELP!
The more detail the better, thanks!
 
Solution
G
Well TBH, your processor is pretty weak (its a low-end dual-core), and as stated before, a lot of laptops come loaded with bloatware. Toshiba has some, but not as much as Dell and HP.

I would certainly get rid of Norton. Norton takes A LOT of resources, just sitting there. A lot of people yell AVG, I've been sporting Microsoft Security Essentials since it's release and have yet to have anything get through onto my laptop or PC, and I take my laptop to public wifi hot spots a few times a week. Malware Bytes is a GREAT supplement, ONLY if your scan with it regularly or buy the full version.

As far as your hard disk usage being high, download a program called Defraggler from Piriform. It is a good tool to run weekly. Your first few runs...
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Zircoben

Zircoben

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Apr 15, 2014
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Download AVG Free antivirus: http://free.avg.com/us-en/homepage
AND Malwarebytes ant-malware. http://www.malwarebytes.org/getmbam

Get rid of Norton, that should help, and really you don't want to pay for that subscription. It may be a possiblity that Norton is trying to get rid of a virus. I would check all your recently installed programs and see if any are fishy and are on your task manager lists. Run scans in AVG and MalwareBytes.

Good luck!
 
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Mouldread

Mouldread

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Apr 17, 2013
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Hey,

most, not to say all laptops come with tons of preinstalled absolutely unnecessary and/or useless programs which are often referred to as "bloatware". They take up loads of resources (Hard Drive space, CPU load, RAM etc.). For this reason laptops have the tendency to "mutate" over time and get slower and slower.

The first thing I always do with a new laptop is get rid of every piece of software I don't want and never going to use. Even better if you can get a clean fresh install of Windows.

Most "free" antivirus programs that come preinstalled on laptops are also pretty bad and generally would try to force you to buy them after the initial "free" period has expired.

Hardware-wise a big deal of the laptops also come with slow 5400 RPM Hard Drives which doesn't help loading times either.

So... to suggest a solution on your problem:

1. The free option - make a fresh install of Windows. Get AVG free antivirus program.
2. If you want to invest some $$ I would strongly suggest buying a SSD and then install the Windows and your programs on it. Keep the existent HDD for storage and don't forget to get the AVG free I suggested (or check some forums for other free good antivirus program).
 
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Zircoben

Zircoben

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This is spot on. A HUGE performance boost would come from an SSD and a clean install of Windows. Use Toshiba Recovery media creator, and if possible, make a factory stock disk. Install it and first thing, get rid of everything that is included on the PC- games stores, Norton, and all the crap besides drivers.

Use free programs like AVG Free and Malwarebytes(mentioned in my earlier post) instead of Norton.

Good luck, again!
 
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G

gizzard1987

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Aug 7, 2013
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Well TBH, your processor is pretty weak (its a low-end dual-core), and as stated before, a lot of laptops come loaded with bloatware. Toshiba has some, but not as much as Dell and HP.

I would certainly get rid of Norton. Norton takes A LOT of resources, just sitting there. A lot of people yell AVG, I've been sporting Microsoft Security Essentials since it's release and have yet to have anything get through onto my laptop or PC, and I take my laptop to public wifi hot spots a few times a week. Malware Bytes is a GREAT supplement, ONLY if your scan with it regularly or buy the full version.

As far as your hard disk usage being high, download a program called Defraggler from Piriform. It is a good tool to run weekly. Your first few runs will probably take several hours but once you get things straightened up, you should notice your performance coming back again. Another good tool from Piriform is CCleaner. It does a lot of good healthy cleanup of temporary files and old un-used registry entries. http://www.piriform.com/ The great thing about these programs is they don't come with junkware and they're FREE. They notify you of updates each time you start them up and they're very small (only a couple MB) and don't require hardly any resources to run.

As far as investing in a SSD for that laptop, I would not waste that kind of money on that laptop. You would still run into a solid CPU bottleneck every time a program demanded more than 2 cores, which Chrome is notorious for. I'll probably get some hate for this, but Mozilla is a great option for lower end systems.

One option that you might be interested in, which I did to my Toshiba laptop was add more ram. My laptop seems almost identical to yours except mine is a 2.2 GHz AMD system. I bought an 8 GB kit of PNY ram from Best Buy for 45 bucks and it has removed a lot of load from all of my hardware.
 
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