CPU going nuts in 8300

One of the office computers is an 8300 and it has been brought to my
attention that the fan was quite noisy. Looking into the problem, I
saw the CPU was going at about 95-100% virtually all the time, even
with no other programs running.. They said it had been doing this
almost from day one.

The system isn't connected to the Internet. I installed Norton 2006 to
see if there was any problem. Clean system, no spy ware, no virii.
Norton detected no problems.

512M ram, 3GHz processor. Everything looks okay, the CPU is just
running like crazy and heating up, which makes the fan go full blast
after a few minutes.

Any ideas?

Bring up the TAsk Manager and check the running processes.
See which one is consuming the CPU, and go from there..


"Rick Ramey" wrote in message
...
One of the office computers is an 8300 and it has been brought to my
attention that the fan was quite noisy. Looking into the problem, I
saw the CPU was going at about 95-100% virtually all the time, even
with no other programs running.. They said it had been doing this
almost from day one.

The system isn't connected to the Internet. I installed Norton 2006 to
see if there was any problem. Clean system, no spy ware, no virii.
Norton detected no problems.

512M ram, 3GHz processor. Everything looks okay, the CPU is just
running like crazy and heating up, which makes the fan go full blast
after a few minutes.

Any ideas?

On Tue, 21 Feb 2006 17:37:27 -0500, "hdrdtd"
wrote:

Bring up the TAsk Manager and check the running processes.
See which one is consuming the CPU, and go from there..

System is the culprit. Any further help would be greatly appreciated.



"Rick Ramey" wrote in message
.. .
One of the office computers is an 8300 and it has been brought to my
attention that the fan was quite noisy. Looking into the problem, I
saw the CPU was going at about 95-100% virtually all the time, even
with no other programs running.. They said it had been doing this
almost from day one.

The system isn't connected to the Internet. I installed Norton 2006 to
see if there was any problem. Clean system, no spy ware, no virii.
Norton detected no problems.

512M ram, 3GHz processor. Everything looks okay, the CPU is just
running like crazy and heating up, which makes the fan go full blast
after a few minutes.

Any ideas?

there is a known piece of spyware called system! it could be that.
if you see a program called system.exe or system32.exe in your windows
or windows\system32 folder, delete it!
this is not microsoft.



Rick Ramey wrote:
System is the culprit. Any further help would be greatly appreciated.

"Rick Ramey" wrote in message
...
On Tue, 21 Feb 2006 17:37:27 -0500, "hdrdtd"
wrote:

Bring up the TAsk Manager and check the running processes.
See which one is consuming the CPU, and go from there..

System is the culprit. Any further help would be greatly appreciated.



Rick -

How far is WinXP updated - SP1? SP2? All other critical updates in place?
I'm finding some hits on the web regarding SP1 doing this and the problem
clearing when SP1 was uninstalled.


Stew

On Wed, 22 Feb 2006 11:36:30 -0500, Jay B wrote:

there is a known piece of spyware called system! it could be that.
if you see a program called system.exe or system32.exe in your windows
or windows\system32 folder, delete it!
this is not microsoft.


I'll look into that, though Norton ran a full scan and did not find
any virii or spy ware.

On Wed, 22 Feb 2006 10:41:02 -0600, "S.Lewis"
wrote:


"Rick Ramey" wrote in message
.. .
On Tue, 21 Feb 2006 17:37:27 -0500, "hdrdtd"
wrote:

Bring up the TAsk Manager and check the running processes.
See which one is consuming the CPU, and go from there..

System is the culprit. Any further help would be greatly appreciated.



Rick -

How far is WinXP updated - SP1? SP2? All other critical updates in place?
I'm finding some hits on the web regarding SP1 doing this and the problem
clearing when SP1 was uninstalled.


Stew


This is SP1, never been updated, never been connected to the Internet.

not connected to the internet? i dont believe you.
so then how did you get the latest virus updates to scan with
norton?!?!? if you werent connected, then you dont have the latest
signatures. same goes for spybot, adaware, etc.
first of all, i dont trust norton, i dont like the latest version, and i
dont think it works properly in finding all the malware in a system.

did you look for the system*.exe processes in the windows folders?
you should run procexp.exe (get it from sysinternals.com) and look at
your full tree of processes and what is running.
perhaps make a copy and post here.
also run hijackthis.exe and post the log from there as well.
you got something brewing inside your computer.
it could even be a rootkit. which is virutally undetectable.

Rick Ramey wrote:

This is SP1, never been updated, never been connected to the Internet.

On Wed, 22 Feb 2006 11:36:30 -0500, Jay B wrote:

there is a known piece of spyware called system! it could be that.
if you see a program called system.exe or system32.exe in your windows
or windows\system32 folder, delete it!
this is not microsoft.

In Task Manager, the 'proper' system would have a PID of 4 (or a
similar very low number). On my system, running about 60 hours, system
has used 00:01:09 of CPU time, yours wuold be in that ballpark
probably.

On Wed, 22 Feb 2006 14:36:13 -0500, Jay B wrote:

not connected to the internet? i dont believe you.

Sorry, not much I can do about that. I can assure with that it has
never been connected, not for an instant.


so then how did you get the latest virus updates to scan with
norton?!?!?

Loaded 2006. I know it needs to be updated, but we cannot connect that
machine at this time.


if you werent connected, then you dont have the latest
signatures. same goes for spybot, adaware, etc.
first of all, i dont trust norton, i dont like the latest version, and i
dont think it works properly in finding all the malware in a system.

did you look for the system*.exe processes in the windows folders?
you should run procexp.exe (get it from sysinternals.com) and look at
your full tree of processes and what is running.
perhaps make a copy and post here.
also run hijackthis.exe and post the log from there as well.
you got something brewing inside your computer.
it could even be a rootkit. which is virutally undetectable.

Rick Ramey wrote:

This is SP1, never been updated, never been connected to the Internet.