From: Dan (dan_at_dbdigitalweb.com)
Date: Sat Mar 05 2005 - 07:19:58 PST
> My Inspiron 7500 laptop, after a hard crash (ya gotta love them 13 yr olds
> who want to chat with friends), now has CPU usage of 100%. No matter what I
> do, I can not get CPU usage to return to normal. Any suggestions?
Well what do you mean by the CPU usage of 100%? Is the system slow? Or
do you mean that in the task menu it says that a item called
Idleprocess is using all of the CPU? If you are worried about
IdleProcess task taking a lot of the CPU percentage....don't be. That
is normal. Now if the system is slow I think you either have adware,
spyware or a virus. I tend to think a virus that is probably a mail
worm sending out tons of copies to everyone you have in your address book.
First scan for viruses. Use either Norton Antivirus, Trend Micro, or
some other well known antivirus program. If that comes up clean (after
updating) download and install ad-aware and SpyBot search and destroy,
then run both (after running the update part of the app). They are free
programs and they will clean your system of adware/spyware. Use both
becuase Ad-aware catches somethings that Spybot misses and vice versa.
I suspect this will clean up your problem. Also if you don't have a
good firewall (Zonealarm, Internet Security etc) then you really should
get one. Yes I know that XP has a firewall, but it does not go far enough.
One tip about messagers. Many of them will send viruses without the
users knowledge. There have been several lately that hijack MSN
Messager for example and ask everyone on your contact list to download a
file. Once downloaded it runs and you are infected. So in short, if
you are not expecting a file DON'T ACCEPT IT! This goes for email as
well. If you are not expecting a certain file then don't accept it or
trash without opening. One problem MSN Messager is that it does not
show what file type is being sent. It will just say "user joe wants to
send you the file 'bye' do you want to accept" it does not say
'bye.exe' or 'bye.jpg' so you don't know if it is a program, image, or
text file. One reason I don't use MSN Messager. But as long as you
don't accept it you should be fine.
-Dan
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