What is this thing DOING?!?!?!?!?!

[ZBTRiddler]

Ok, got a problem here. My home built machine is pissing me off!!!!

All of a sudden, it just starts running at 50% CPU load - for no reason. The Hard drive LED stays on, but the drive is not running. Right now the pointer is jumping all over the screen.

My machine specs are:

Gigabyte P35-DS3P
Intel E6550
Gigabyte 8600GT Silent
4GB Patriot DDR2-800 (4x1 at 4-4-4-12)
Creative Audigy 2 ZS Plat
Leadtek Tv Tuner
Thermaltake 500W PSU
Samsung SATA- DVD Burner
150GB Raptor (OS)
320GB WD-SATA
250GB WD-PATA

Running Win XP Pro

 

[CNeufeld]

Look for ProcessExplorer on the Microsoft website. It can help diagnose what's running on your machine. Like TaskManager, but useful.

Clint

 

[ZBTRiddler]

I am going to give it a try. Last time this happened, I un-installed Adobe Reader, and it stopped. But i needed to re-install it to read some investment documents - and BAMM - it starts again.

Hopefully getting rid of Adobe will help.

 

[beurling]

ctrl-alt-del. task manager. look for the process at 50% cpu usage. That should be your first step... happened to me too once.

 

[ZBTRiddler]

I did the Ctrl-Alt-Del, and it shows nothing abnormal. 97-99% system idle process. and maybe 1-3% of IE.7 or something else - thats it.

I have built many machines over the years - so I am not new at this. If you watch the graph on the Performance tab, it is like watching an O-Scope. Goes from 70-55-30-3% CPU load, over and over and over again.

I kinda think it might be a hardware malfunction, since no software is using it.