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What is my PC doing ?


Cranfield

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Sometimes whilst I am browsing and operating no other tasks, my PC will start "working" furiously, this slows down my browsing and I have no idea what its doing.

Occasionally, I get "not responding" problems when I navigate around and have to "end now" to clear things.

 

I firstly assumed it was auto updating, but sometimes it goes on for ages, its definitely not performing any scheduled scans.

I have tried "Ctrl-Alt-Del", but that doesn't tell me much, just what processes are active.

 

I have also run AdAware after this happens and found nothing, so its not some virus type of activity.

 

Is there some way that I can find out what my PC is doing ?

"I gotta go where its warm, I gotta fly to saint somewhere "

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Try doing an alt-ctrl-del key press and have a look at the Task Manager?? That is in XP of course!! Not sure if it still works under Vista? This will show you what is using what!! One thing I do know of is ADOBE programmes use a LOT of system even when it is idle!! Try googling?

Chris Goddard


It is to be observed that 'angling' is the name given to fishing by people who can't fish.

If GOD had NOT meant us to go fishing, WHY did he give us arms then??


(If you can't help out someone in need then don't bother my old Dad always said! My grandma put it a LITTLE more, well different! It's like peeing yourself in a black pair of pants she said! It gives you a LOVELY warm feeling but no-one really notices!))

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When it is doing this, get task manager up, go to the Processes tab and ensure that "Show Processes From All Users" is ticked. Then click on the column "CPU" to sort the processes in order of CPU utilisation - whatever is busy should appear at the top of the list. Then google the name of the process (or ask here).

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"That is in XP of course!! Not sure if it still works under Vista?"

 

Yup. Vista, server 2003, windows 7, and every other OS since they first introduced the feature which I think was after NT was replaced.

 

For anyone who uses task manager, I'd suggest you take a look at Process Explorer which offers the option to replace task manager as the default. Microsoft bought it (as part of the entire package of utilities he'd written) from Mark Russinovich and it is far better for both information and actions you might want from task manager.

" My choices in life were either to be a piano player in a whore house or a politician. And to tell the truth, there's hardly any difference!" - Harry Truman, 33rd US President

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Well, the culprit is avgnsx.exe and it was using 489,090k CPU.

 

This is obviously part of my Anti Virus and I assume its updating.

If so, there has got to be a better way than my PC grinding to a halt and strangely, it disengages the AVG Firewall and I get the Microsoft Security warning.

"I gotta go where its warm, I gotta fly to saint somewhere "

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It looks like that might be the link scanner which pre-fetches and scans any webpages you look at - when I had AVG I disabled that because it was slowing everything to a crawl.

 

If I were you, I would uninstall AVG and go with Microsoft Security Essentials - it's free and good.

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There are a number of AV suites currentley on the market that suck the life from your PC. Some labelled pre scanners and others realtime site scanning.

AVG and Avast recently tried on my system both crippled it.

 

Am running the Microshaft essential and all sees ok atmo

MOH.gifmynewsiggy.gif

www.electricunclesam.com

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Unfortunately, having paid for my AVG I am now wedded to it for the duration of the contract.

My miserly tendencies will not permit me to walk away from something I have paid for. :(

 

I will disable the link scanner and see if that improves things.

"I gotta go where its warm, I gotta fly to saint somewhere "

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I'll second the Microsoft Security Essentials - at least on windows 7. Almost no system load at all. 2.6Mb of memory, 0.01% cpu (that is one hundredth of a percent).

" My choices in life were either to be a piano player in a whore house or a politician. And to tell the truth, there's hardly any difference!" - Harry Truman, 33rd US President

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