my computer is almost constantly at 100% cpu usage

some questions

1. you said you had a new hard drive, what was on it? just OS and some dell bloatware? Did the problem reoccur on this configuration? or was it after you start adding stuff/SW into it?

2. does this happen when you are in safe mode?

3. for svchost eating up  your cpu, see this article: http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/windows-vista/what-is-svchostexe-and-why-is-it-running/

4. you can open up performance monitor in your task manager and see which specific process is eating your cpu... Not sure if  you E1405 has a finger print reader but my 1530 has one and had problems with its driver back then. Since im not into it.. i just uninstalled it, problem solved..

1)the hard drive had an operating system and some basic components, internet explorer and some other things, it happened fairly immediately so i'm not sure which came first the chicken or the egg. there wasn't any trial  stuff.

2) yes it happens in safe mode, surprisingly though it happens quicker than in regular mode

4) no finger print reader, and after a short while of running fine it will say that IE is taking up 70%, or windows explorer, or just got google chrome and it will say it's taking up 70%. same thing with my antivirus, whichever one I use at the time. it's basic things that it says is using up my cpu, I haven't installed any games or programs other than antivirus, chrome, the automatic updates, and vlc media player.

1) windows task manager, and it doesn't start messing up immediately (most of the time) it takes a half an hour or so, even if I just let it warm up for that half hour.

2) no how do I do that? is there a program that could scan and tell me what's compatible or needs to be updated?

3) it's about 3 years old but it was running fine up until a couple of months ago

4) i'll save that one for later. because what happened last time was I would get an error message then my computer wouldn't start up after that. so I would have to go into the repair menu by pressing f8 and restoring to factory image. a little nervous of that happening again.

unfortunately you have to know your machine in and out and its devices and drivers. Common once are BIOS, Chipset, video card, LAN cards, blue tooth, etc. You can go to dell support website and check the latest drivers available for your machine and see in device manager if you have those installed. If you are still on warranty, call up dell and have them send someone into your house, specially if the problem is easily reproducable.

Im not talking about restoring factory image, im talking about reformat, then reinstall everything. Do this only if you are comfortable with it, else call dell or find somebody to assist you. Make sure you have all the driver CDs with you else, you need to download everything from dell support website.

Ok,, few more questions

1. which application is "saying" that  IE/Windows Explorer/Chrome is taking up 70%? Does it last for X number of minutes or only when you start them up?

2. Ok if the HDD came with an OS, most probably its drivers are not updated or may not be even compatible with your machine. Have you double checked if you have the updated drivers installed as well as BIOS.

3. Is this a new machine?

4. if all things fail, since  you just had a new HDD and nothing much on it, if you have the windows CD of your machine and its drivers, try to do a clean install again of the OS and its driver but be observant this time and try to see which driver will cause the problem. If problem persist, call dell to check your HW.

i just checked my hard drive memory and it's up to 101 gig, i hadn't touched it since putting up the information earlier.

i am still under waranty, but they say that because it's a software issue they won't cover it, at least not through chat. is it different if I have someone come out to take a look at it? 

i'll give the drivers a shot and let you know

it makes a lot of difference if you have a person seating there with  you.  Push them to send somebody to your house and ask them to do a "clean reinstall" for you. I find it odd that they just hand you over a HDD with an OS on it as a replacement. They should have reinstalled the OS for  you when they replaced your HDD. I just had mine replaced couple of weeks ago coz it had some bad sectors already and the tech guy reinstalled the OS in front of me. He even left me my old HDD for 14 days, just in case i still need some files on it.. it was just picked up yesterday actually..

I installed all the drivers yesterday, and it seemed to be doing well. but in the end still at 100% cpu.

so then after the clean reinstall wouldn't I still just need to reinstall all the drivers and updates? is it possible that an update could be doing this?

I think that now that I have updated my drivers i'll do a disk cleanup registry clean, and defrag, and see if that helps. then if it still doesn't work i'll try and get them to send somebody over for a clean install.

Hi!  :-)  Hopefully you will see/read this as this message is almost a year old.

I go out and help people with their computers - for free!  :-)  Sorry though, I limit my myself to the friends that I have (ie: I am not a company nor do I work for someplace like Goodwill, The Salvantion Army or anything like that).  Last year (2008) a friend of mine started having the same problem that you seem to be experiencing.  Sadly, it was a virus that caused it.

If you have never heard of them, you should go check out www.av-comparatives.org (or go Google av-comparatives).  This is an independent group of people in Germany who stress test all sixteen of the major anti-virus programs which are sold around the world.  The thing to go and look up are: 1)Which antivirus is the best currently, and 2)What they do NOT do.  This second item is the very important.  Why?  Because even though some virus protection programs DO get rid of the viruses - they do NOT necessarily leave your computer in a great state.

Going back to my friend, he basically runs IE and plays Everquest on his computer.  Suddenly, IE began using 100% of his CPU and all of his memory.  He had the Mondo virus and, after removing it, his IE still would use up all of his memory and CPU.  We found out that if you just kill explorer and then start it back up - this stopped happening.

Now, you say you replaced the hard drive, the operating system, and so on.  The problem isn't with any of that.  It is most probably operator error.  :-)  What I mean is - if you wipe the drive - the virus is gone.  If you then: 1)Go back to the same place you got the virus - then you've got it again, 2)If your backups are contaminated and you use them - then you've got the virus again, 3)If you use the System Restore feature - it is very likely the restore point is corrupted.  We ran into all of these problems and more.

My recommendation?  Start from scratch.  Do a LOW LEVEL reformat of the hard drive - not a quickie.  Some viruses are now taking advantage of the fact that quick reformats do not wipe out certain tracks on the hard drive (that's how Microsoft knows if you've already installed Windows on the machine).  Only a LOW LEVEL reformat will take care of this problem.  Install a clean (from CD) copy of the OS onto the system.  Get the network up and running and then install the best anti-virus software you can find (see the av-comparatives place for more information).  Once you have that installed - THEN install each piece of software from a fresh download (if possible) or CD (if not).  Once you have a clean install of your system, drivers, anti-virus software, firewall software, and all of the other basic stuff - BUT NO PERSONAL STUFF LIKE E-MAIL - STOP!

Go to a site called UBCD (The Ultimate Boot CD).  Download the parts of this program, follow the instructions explicitly, and create yourself a UBCD.  Boot up into UBCD, tell it you DO want network connections on the first time (only works for systems with an ethernet cable attached to the router/modem).  Boot up UBCD, start up Avira, tell it to update, and scan your system for viruses.  If Avira won't work - you already probably have a virus.  In that case, reboot UBCD, bring up Avast!, Stinger, and then Avira and tell Avira to begin scanning immediately (no update).

Hopefully, Avira will work the first time.  Once Avira is through and your system has a clean bill of health, you are ready for the next step.  Get a "never used before" external USB hard drive.  Preferrably a brand new one.  Set it up and plug it in to your system.  Reboot into UBCD.  UBCD comes with free software to back up your system.  Use it.  I prefer 7zip or Winzip because they get all of the hidden and system files.  Make an archive on the external USB drive.  When through - you now have a clean copy of your system drive in case you ever need it.  Don't use it unless you are running UBCD.  Mark the exterior of the drive in some way so you know what it is and why you do not use it.

Once you have completed the above, you are then ready to go back and begin installing the rest of your software.  If anything should go wrong (like the system begins acting up again) you can rest safe in knowing that you have a clean copy of your system that you can restore.

To restore things like e-mail, first bring up your antivirus software and have it ready to do a scan.  Plug in whatever device you backed the files up to, let your anti-virus software recognize the device, and then scan it immediately.  Once through if the files pass inspection - you can install them.  If not, then you have to decide what to do about them.  If it is e-mail, my recommendation is to re-install it by hand (if you know how).  If you do not know how either get a friend who does or follow this guideline: (I use FireFox/Thunderbird.  If you use Outlook you are pretty much on your own because I do not know where to look for the files.)  In Thunderbird, a directory is made in a hidden folder called /My Documents/ /Application Data/Mozilla/Thunderbird/Profiles.  You can see these files (in Windows XP and earlier) by going to the View option for your folder and clicking on the option.  In Vista and later you have to have administrator privileges in order to change things and most people do NOT have this privilege (so you are stuck).  Hopefully you are not stuck.  Change the option, go to that folder, and look for the e-mail folder and files.  In Thunderbird, all e-mail is nothing more than a bunch of individual files.  So you just drag your files to that folder and suddenly you have all of those e-mails.  Then, going back to the virus scan, if there were viruses found in certain e-mails all you have to do is to locate those e-mails and delete them.  The viruses usually show up as attachments (like movies and such).  If you want to keep the messages (but not the viruses) then just delete the attachments and re-run the virus scanner against the e-mail folder.

This is about as much info as I can give you in generic terms.  I hope it helps.  :-)

dang so close, it was doing well for the last like 3 times, well cpu usage is right back where it likes to be. I have to go to work soon, and I have a double tomorrow, so I will try the other plans either sunday, monday, or tuesday. but definately by tuesday. thank you for your responses.

Thank you for your help. and if my computer begins acting up again i'll try it. but for now I was thinking about my computer and the only thing that I had in common with my last hard drive and this one was two files. pctools spyware doctor and VLC media player. I opened ASO and completely removed VLC from my computer, restarted and it isn't messing up yet. if this doesn't work then I will try and reboot again. 

my computer is working fine now, even to the point that I can watch movies on it. i'm online with a cpu usage of 5 %. the reason was the svchost. I looked through all of the processes on task manager and everything was eating up so much that I couldn't figure out which was the main issue. I downloaded process explorer and unlike the last time when I had internet explorer and everything was being eaten up equally, I had google chrome. with google chrome it loads the page then doesn't take up any more cpu after it loads, so I could see that a file with no subfiles titled svchost was taking up over 50%of my cpu and for a minute around 70%. I reopened in admin mode, restared the process and I haven't had a problem since. I was even watching movies on youtube yesterday with multiple tabs open. thank you very much for your help.