Tim's Tech Tips

This question was asked on a forum, and I was going to write my response there, but I thought I ought to post an update anyway; so I'm replying here.

Problem:

"I was using my laptop last night and it started to go slow so i restarted.
When i turned it back on it was extremely slow and pretty much unresponsive.
When i go to the control panel it says that the cpu usage is 100%
i didnt download anythinbg and i wasnt watching porn when this happened.
I have windows xp btw."

Response:

If your CPU usage is at 100%, that means that a process is eating up all your processor cycles, so nothing else can do anything.
I won't be able to diagnose this problem fully without more information, so let's start with figuring out what process is using all that CPU time.

• Step 1:Press CTRL+SHIFT+ESC to open Task Manager
• Step 2: Click on the "Processes" tab.
• Step 3: Just below the list of running processes, you'll see a check-box, labeled "Show processes from all users". Check that box. (You may need to accept a UAC prompt, if you're using Vista or Windows 7. Click continue if it prompts you.)
• Step 4: Just above the list of running processes, you'll see the title row. Above each column, you'll see "Image Name", "User Name", and so on. Click on the column label: "CPU" so that it's sorted by HIGHEST CPU usage. (You may have to click twice).
• Step 5: You may see that it jumps between several processes using the most processor time. Write down the information in the "Image Name" column for processes that seem to be on the top the most, and also write down, on average, how much CPU they're using (The value under the CPU column). 

Once you have this information, please send it to me either via e-mail, or using the instant chat or the "call" modules on the right side of this page. After I have that information, I'll update this topic with a more complete solution.