CPU temp to high??

[Noema]

Hello everyone,

Since yesterday my PC has been running very slowly. I noticed that the Task Manager shows a 100% CPU usage, even if Idle. So I guess that's causing the slowdown.

I ran all my anti-spyware and anti-virus programs, with no results.

However, I also noticed that my CPU is (perhaps?) too hot: 64 Celcius (when idle in Windows).

Could that be making the CPU throttle and hence hindering its performance?

Here're my specs:

PC Specs:

AMD Athlon 64 3200+
ABIT NF8 Mobo nForce3 250GB
RADEON 9600XT
Kingston VALUERAM 512 MB DDR PC3200 RAM
Seagate 7200rpm E-IDE 80 GB HHD
LiteON DVD-ROM/CD-RW Combo
Sony 3.5 Floppy

 

[PascalT]

Check for viruses maybe. Look in task manager and try to find what is eating up your cpu.

and yes 64C when idle is very hot. I get 38C or so on mine, most get 35ish.

 

[Noema]

I've already done every anitvirus I can think of...Norton, Trend, Panda, you name it. Antispyware hasn't found anything yet (I tried Adaware, Spydoctor, Ms Antispyware)

The task manager doesn't show anything...There's the System Idle Process at 99 but as far as I know, that's normal.

If I boot WinXP in safe mode, the CPU goes back to normal usage (3-5% ish)....

I think I'll go insane....

 

[PascalT]

Did you try formatting? something obviously is loading up in windows that does this. if the AV didn't pick it up, try ZoneAlarm. it helped me fix my boot level virus problems.

and yes system idle process is normal.

 

[Plasmah7]

Here you tried all the rest now try the best:

www.free-av.com <---- Free for non commercial use! The best damn virus scanner you will ever use. Its small fast and the updates are every week or so.

Have fun

 

[Noema]

I reformated the machine, and just reinstalled Windows.

CPU is back to normal usage (almost never over 10%) and the temperature dropped to 49C...so I guess the overload was responsible for heating it.

Everything was great...until I intalled the ATI drivers for my RADEON.

After rebooting...lo and behold...the CPU was overloaded again and the PC slowed down to a crawl. The CPU overheated again.

I uninstalled the drivers and CPU is back to normal; clearly the ATI drivers are the culprit in this situaiton.

What should I do? I can't do without those drivers, but they seem to be creating conflict.

 

[Noema]

By the way, this happened with the newest version of the drivers I got from ati.com.

I also tried the older drivers that came with the card. Same problem.

Even the XP drivers yield the same results...

 

[Jman13]

System Idle Process at 99 means that only 1 percent of your CPU is working at the time, and 99% is idle. So, you should be at 1% usage. What in the task manager (apart from idle) has activity? If you're at 99 percent idle, but 100% CPU usage, you've got some malicious program doing something.

 

[HeaterCore]

That temp is way too high for an A64. There are probably a few heatsinks (e.g. XP-120) that you could run passively and see better temps. If your diode isn't just completely whacked, I'd say it's time to reseat that HSF.

-HC-

 

[Noema]

It seems that the reason why the temp is so high is that somehow, the RADEON drivers make the CPU usage go to the roof (100% - all the time). After I uninstalled the drivers, CPU usage went back to normal and the temp dropped to around 45C. So it seems to be a software problem.

Thing is , now I can't use the Video card in games, since the drivers are not installed.
Any clue as to what may cause the problems??