Erratic CPU usage on Dell Inspiron 1540

[pedromendez]

My girlfriend's laptop has had a major problem on it the past few month although atm she is unable to send it off for repairs despite having insurance for it as she needs it for university work. Whenever she tries to play a game, watch a movie use multiple word documents the CPU useage goes from using barely any recources to shooting up to around 90% and then back down again. We used norton to record the CPU useage and it looked like constant spikes from 10%ish to 90% every 5 seconds from just watching a pretty poor quality movie on VLC (Dumbo if anyone wondered XD).

Had anyone got any ideas or tips on what we could do to try and improve the CPUs performance?

Cpu is a Intel core duo Thank you very much

 

[therealsamyG]

Hmm, Windows 7 for the OS correct?

Click start --> Control Panel --> System and Security --> Power Options and click either one of the options and see if that changes anything.

Tbh, I don't see too much of a problem with the CPU spiking up here and there when using programs, does it do it when the computer is idle?

 

[pedromendez]

It does spike randomly during idle yeah, something i didnt mention is that when i open a program, e.g Firefox the CPU can sometimes jump as high as 100% just opening it Tried the power option and neither have helped in the past. Thank you for the response though

 

[eisbchri]

It does spike randomly during idle yeah, something i didnt mention is that when i open a program, e.g Firefox the CPU can sometimes jump as high as 100% just opening it Tried the power option and neither have helped in the past. Thank you for the response though

I have the exact same problem with my Dell Inspirion 15 M5040. My processor is AMD C-60 APU with Radeon(tm) HD Graphics 1 00 GHz. It constantly spikes up and down to 100 percent CPU, and stays in the 90-100 percent range most of the time. It really makes the computer crawl. I am trying to figure out if this is a problem with the hardware, or normal for this size processor. Let me know if anyone knows!