Old XP PC - Reinstalled. 100% CPU Usage?

Just reinstalled a PC for my neighbour as it was running incredibly slow.
It's not the best computer in the world as she only uses it for Facebook!

It's a Pentium Celeron with 768Mb RAM.
It's fine for the first few minutes, then it almost locks up.

I managed to load Task Manager (which took 15 minutes to load) and it has the process 'System' using 99% on the CPU. I've looked about it and some are saying to update the machine, some say it's anti-virus related.

Running Avast Free/Malwarebytes and XP Pro with SP3 - and almost all updates are done.

Anyone got any ideas?

I wouldn't use xp on anything less than a gig - we have a few pc's at work still with 512Mb and they are stupidly slow, not quite as bad as yours but not far off. As much as 512 was a fair bit when xp came out, the service packs and updates bloat it a bit.

It could be worth using a trimmed version of xp, windows fundamentals for legacy pc's, trimming your xp installation yourself using nlite, or even using server 2003 instead.

just read what process is using the 100% and stop it running..

then stop it starting up again in system configuration..

If you're confident there's no BS on the PC then the first thing I'd try is disconnecting it from the internet and temporarily disabling/uninstalling Avast to see if its real-time protection is causing high CPU cycles. The full version of Malwarebytes (but not the free edition) also has real-time protection so disable that too. If Avast is the problem then switch to Microsoft Security Essentials.

Other things to consider include the usual boring crap: is the BIOS up to date, have you installed latest chipset drivers, etc.

I've got loads of RAM I can put into it. But it doesnt make any difference. System process (Not System Idle Process) hogs 99% of the CPU.

I also know people using PC's with XP SP3 with 256Mb RAM still, with no real issues - albeit a bit slow.

Just about to run Belarc to find the correct drivers for the chipset etc.

I'm on it at the moment and everything seems fine. I'll see if it hangs again in the next few minutes. Windows Update's might have sorted the problem... Wotch this space. :)

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by wakadoo

just read what process is using the 100% and stop it running..

then stop it starting up again in system configuration..

---

Stopping the 'System' process would surely kill windows. :p

maybe cpu is on its way out.. overheating? dirty?

I Don't think you can stop the system idle process :)

was this a fresh install or a repair install?

Fresh install. Windows XP SP2 Pro - Upgraded to SP3 straight away and all updates have no complete.

I ran Process Explorer and it did go to 100% whilst installing programs. But now all is done, it seems fine. I'm going to use the machine for the next hour or so to test to see if anything else causes the problem.

One process that is a complete hog is wau something - automatic update client. I saw a machine on its knees when that was running and it dropped to about nowt when I disabled it. If it's a fresh install it may be that there are loads of patches etc that the auto update is getting data on.