CPU usage too high, but why?

Question

I have been having trouble with MS Word being slow, as well as Realplayer responsiveness (including some freeze-ups). I copied-and-pasted a few words in MS word while watching the CPU Usage meter on the Windows Task Manager and it spiked to 50%. I opened Realplayer and it spiked up to 100%! This computer is less than a month old, has an Intel Duo Core processor with 2GB of RAM and over 200 GB of free hard drive. This shouldn't be happening. Could there be something wrong with the hard drive? Or would this be a Windows issue?   A Dell technician wants me to do a System Restore, which is a big pain in the since I have to  start from scratch again, reloading all my old files and updating programs and windows, etc, etc. If that doesn't work, she said to return the computer for exchange. Anyone have any ideas before i go doing this?

rickmktg · Answer

Bao Pu wrote:

I have been having trouble with MS Word being slow, as well as Realplayer responsiveness (including some freeze-ups). I copied-and-pasted a few words in MS word while watching the CPU Usage meter on the Windows Task Manager and it spiked to 50%. I opened Realplayer and it spiked up to 100%! This computer is less than a month old, has an Intel Duo Core processor with 2GB of RAM and over 200 GB of free hard drive. This shouldn't be happening. Could there be something wrong with the hard drive? Or would this be a Windows issue?

A Dell technician wants me to do a System Restore, which is a big pain in the since I have to start from scratch again, reloading all my old files and updating programs and windows, etc, etc. If that doesn't work, she said to return the computer for exchange. Anyone have any ideas before i go doing this?

See which processes are using the CPU.

Bao Pu · Answer

Hi Rickmktg   re: 'See which processes are using the CPU'   And then what? There are 63 processes listed. The ones I notice with the highest Mem usage are WINWORD.EXE, Explorer.exe, Svchost.exe, AcctMgr.exe, CCAPP.EXE and IEXPLORE.EXE.   (I'm sure my last computer, a Dell Dimension 4100, Pentium 3 @ 1GHz and 384 MB RAM had alot and it ran MS Word with no problems.)

rickmktg · Answer

Bao Pu wrote: Hi Rickmktg   re: 'See which processes are using the CPU'   And then what? There are 63 processes listed. The ones I notice with the highest Mem usage are WINWORD.EXE, Explorer.exe, Svchost.exe, AcctMgr.exe, CCAPP.EXE and IEXPLORE.EXE.   (I'm sure my last computer, a Dell Dimension 4100, Pentium 3 @ 1GHz and 384 MB RAM had alot and it ran MS Word with no problems.)   CPU usage, not memory...  I suspect it will be ccapp.exe...

Bao Pu · Answer

re: 'CPU usage, not memory.'   Ok, everything is at zero except System Idle Process. While I'm typing or copy-pasting in Word, it is of course WINWORD which races up the list.

rickmktg · Answer

Bao Pu wrote: re: 'CPU usage, not memory.'   Ok, everything is at zero except System Idle Process. While I'm typing or copy-pasting in Word, it is of course WINWORD which races up the list.   So if you're using 100% of CPU, and it says it's WINWORD, then your issue is with Word.  Start by closing Word, finding all instances of normal.dot, and deleting it, then open Word. Message Edited by rickmktg on 10-26-2006 06:50 AM

Bao Pu · Answer

Hi Rick   Well, it didn't shoot up to 100%, it was about 50%. I did as you suggested and deleted the 2 'normal.dot' that I found. reopened a Word document (a big one) and it went to 50% still. I copied and pasted some text and it again shot up to 48%, as it did when I clicked UNDO, (which was not instantaneous as it should be). I closed Word, opened a blank document - CPU usuage was 58%. That's on the 'Performance' tab. It's hard to keep track of what's going on on the 'Processes' tab, but it seemed the highest it went while I opened Word was 38%, still second place to System Idle Process. Opening Realplayer, however, eventually took over top spot at 99%.   After reading your webpage I was thinking about sending you an email with all the details of this problem and everything I have done on this new computer. May I, or would you rather deal with it here? (Email support for this XPS system is only available in Chat it seems, and Chat is not available in Canada. So I am left with phone support [in India] of these Dell Commnunity forums.)

klbf · Answer

does word stay above 50% while its open or is this just while you open word/ and or copy paste? after which it goes down to almost not cpu useage?

how big is this "big word file" and are there a lot of embedded images? or just text?

My Web Site

rickmktg · Answer

Bao Pu wrote:

Hi Rick

Well, it didn't shoot up to 100%, it was about 50%. I did as you suggested and deleted the 2 "normal.dot" that I found. reopened a Word document (a big one) and it went to 50% still. I copied and pasted some text and it again shot up to 48%, as it did when I clicked UNDO, (which was not instantaneous as it should be). I closed Word, opened a blank document - CPU usuage was 58%. That's on the "Performance" tab. It's hard to keep track of what's going on on the "Processes" tab, but it seemed the highest it went while I opened Word was 38%, still second place to System Idle Process. Opening Realplayer, however, eventually took over top spot at 99%.

After reading your webpage I was thinking about sending you an email with all the details of this problem and everything I have done on this new computer. May I, or would you rather deal with it here? (Email support for this XPS system is only available in Chat it seems, and Chat is not available in Canada. So I am left with phone support [in India] of these Dell Commnunity forums.)

Feel free to contact me via email.

NemesisDB · Answer

sounds like a plugin could be causing the issue. the adobe plugin routinely hangs my system if I happen to have a large amount of info (like an access table) on the clipboard before I open Word.

Try clicking Tools, Templates and Addins, and then unchecking all the add-ins (or hitting remove).

Storage, Drives & Media

CPU usage too high, but why?

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