High CPU usage

[Neutrino]

Alright, I've actually got two questions here...

First, I just built a new computer and have installed Windows 98 SE on it. I've now finished updating all the drivers as well as windows. I then installed some hardware monitoring software and found out that my CPU is running at about 90% usage constantly with nothing open. Any ideas on why or how to fix it?

And second, my CPU is an AMD Sempron 2600+. I bought it retail and installed it with the standard fan and heatsink using the thermal pad that came with it. Now it runs at about 50 degrees Celcius at idle. But now I'm thinking that it might have something to do with the high CPU usage I mentioned above. But anyway, I was wondering just what is a good temp for this CPU to run at? Because that seemed rather too warm to me.


Thanks for any help.

Edit: Forgot to mention that I'm also getting very high ram usage too. It's around 200MB with just one instance of firefox open. Oh and I've run ad-aware SE, spybot, and AVG virus scanner and the comp is clean.

Oh and system specs if they help at all:

AMD Sempron 2600+
512MB DDR PC3200 RAM
ATI Radeon 9600 Vid Card
Gigabyte 7NF-RZ nforce 2 Motherboard

 

[[Matt]]

Its probably to do with the fact you're using windows 98 with 512Mb of ram. Theres a known bug in the memory management system where 512mb of memory or more can occasionally bring about very high system and memory usagealthough this bug is far more common if you have more than 512mb.

Try adding this line in the win.ini file....

MaxFileCache = 524288.

If that doesnt help i would honestly suggest investing in a copy of Windows XP as it uses system resources far more efficiently and games tend to run quicker also.

 

[Asus]

Nothing seems really out of the norm.
50C at idle is pretty average among all Home PCs. Also the Athlon XP/Sempron idles higher but does not increase temp as much as other CPUs once under load.

The memory is within limits but it does seem a little high for Win98. Though Windows XP would probably use about that much memory.

As for the CPU usage, do you know what program is taking that up? I guess ctrl-alt-del isn't the same on 98, is it... Been so long.

 

[The Dark Elf]

hmm whenever I'd get unusual cpu usage I'd check for a hidden IE window that some sites seem to create, bogs everything down

Though if your using FF it shouldn't be able to do that so I'm probably barking up the wrong tree.

 

[Neutrino]

Thanks for the help guys.

Its probably to do with the fact you're using windows 98 with 512Mb of ram. Theres a known bug in the memory management system where 512mb of memory or more can occasionally bring about very high system and memory usagealthough this bug is far more common if you have more than 512mb.

Try adding this line in the win.ini file....

MaxFileCache = 524288.

If that doesnt help i would honestly suggest investing in a copy of Windows XP as it uses system resources far more efficiently and games tend to run quicker also.

I tried setting that in the .ini file and also tried it in the system configuration utility in msconfig, but niether seemed to fix anything.

Nothing seems really out of the norm.
50C at idle is pretty average among all Home PCs. Also the Athlon XP/Sempron idles higher but does not increase temp as much as other CPUs once under load.

The memory is within limits but it does seem a little high for Win98. Though Windows XP would probably use about that much memory.

As for the CPU usage, do you know what program is taking that up? I guess ctrl-alt-del isn't the same on 98, is it... Been so long.

Alright thanks, I was hoping I didn't need to get a different heatsink or reinstall it.

It's difficult to tell what programs are using the CPU as 98 won't tell me. The thing is though that this was a completely fresh install so it doesn't seem like there should be a problem. I'm beginning to wonder if there isn't some sort of compatibility problem between 98 and the semprons.

hmm whenever I'd get unusual cpu usage I'd check for a hidden IE window that some sites seem to create, bogs everything down

Though if your using FF it shouldn't be able to do that so I'm probably barking up the wrong tree.

Ya, I'm using FF. But even so I hadn't even connected to the internet yet when it was running idle at 90% usage.


Well, thanks again for the suggestions. After messing about with it for some time I finally just said screw it and bought XP Home. Everything seems to work fine with it. Dang Microsoft, can't a guy just try to save a little money?