Laptop randomly begins major processing

[sagooding]

I have a hp dv7-3085dx. it has a intel core i7 quad core and 6 gigs of ram.

During normal activities such as playing music or checking emails it suddenly begins processing in very large amounts. the CPU usage goes up to 90s and everything else slows down.

When i leave it for five minutes standing alone with nothing processing it returns to normal.

what is going on ? and how do i stop this annoyance.

 

[thechief73]

Hello sagooding,

It is most likely a system process that is running in the backround or a program that starts itself with windows that may not be nessisary eating up your system resources(Antivirus, Auto Updates, Firewall or Spyware Program), but it may be hard to figure out what one is causing the slowdown. You might want to open up the task manager when it happens and see if a process is eating up your memory also, that may be the culprit program.

Another thing you could try if you are comfortable with disabling some windows services to improve availible system resources is go to: http://www.blackviper.com/ and follow the guides they have there.

Keep in mind this is just an idea of what could be casuing it, it may be something else entirly.

 

[fazers_on_stun]

OP: If you are using XP or Vista, check to see if disk indexing is on (this enables faster searching of your hard drive, but IMO is not worth the slowdown unless you routinely search your drives for files).

In XP, just open Windows Explorer, right-click on the hard drive(s), select Properties from the pop-up menu, then look near the bottom of the properties page to see if indexing ("Allow Indexing Service to index this disk for fast file searching") has a checkmark. If it is, uncheck it then select "apply changes to drivee, subfolders and files" or some such.

IIRC, both XP and Vista have indexing on by default, Win7 does not.

 

[thechief73]

^fazers_on_stun^ I was kind of thinking about that in the back of my mind, But I did not think that indexing would cause that amount of CPU usage.

sagooding - If you are using Win7 and maybe in Vista also but I am not 100% sure, there is a background process that defragments the hard drive when the OS thinks the PC is in a low use or idle state. That is something you may want to look into also, I dont know too much about it as I am still using WinXP.

 

[fazers_on_stun]

^fazers_on_stun^ I was kind of thinking about that in the back of my mind, But I did not think that indexing would cause that amount of CPU usage.

sagooding - If you are using Win7 and maybe in Vista also but I am not 100% dure, there is a background process that defragments the hard drive when the OS thinks the PC is in a low use or idle state. Taht is something you may want to look into also, I dont know too much about it as I am still using WinXP.

Hmm, you're probably correct, esp. since he's using a quad-core CPU. Indexing slows down the system responsiveness but mainly due to the hard drive being in continuous usage. My work laptop (for which I don't have admin privileges and thus cannot turn off indexing in XP) is almost useless for the first 5-10 minutes after I turn it on due to the stupid indexing feature. However I just turn it on and then go get a cup of coffee - much easier that dealing with the IT dept. idiots .

Probably your first suggestion - looking in task manager and seeing what's going on - is the best solution for the OP. I think HP is about as famous as Dell for loading up their computers with crapware. My wife's laptop is an HP with Win7 and it is starting to slow down - time to wipe the drive I think..

 

[thechief73]

HP is about as famous as Dell for loading up their computers with crapware

Yeah I know first hand Dell is terrible, I bought a Dell for my parents to go online and do photos stuff, and the thing has always been terribly slow, even after cleaning it up and turning off unessasary services and OS eye-candy, its still slow as an old dog. I re-installed the OS, but I only had a recovery disk ot a full OS so that just put it back to the way it was shipped.