I am running ME and my computer has run up the CPU usage to 100% nearly all the time only dropping occasionally to 60%. This occurs without having ANY programs open.
I've run Spybot, Adaware, Pest Patrol, defrag, scan disk etc.
One note: Adaware shows from 700 to 1000 processes running!!
This slow down started to occur, I believe, earlier in the year but I cannot attribute any one action or addition to instantly seeing a mass slowdown. I do know that I occasionally get a WINDOWS UPDATE notice for IE and Outlook for versions all ready installed per the install log. When I try to update the computer seems to hang-up. But I suspect that it is the 100% usage not allowing the process to finish.
I have a Gateway Computer, Pentium 4 CPU at 1.75MHZ, 256MB memory and an 80 GB HD w/ only 17GB utilized. I recently installed a NVIDIA Force video card w/ 256MB. Only change in the computer performance is it allows my son to play certain games and the processes detected by Ad Aware went up.
I have read a number of forums on this type of problem but have never come across a solution, other than to reload the entire system. I do notice that a lot of the forums mention that the processes running are down in the 10's, 20’s, or 30's, not 700!
Any help would be appreciated. Thanks.