Computer help sites?

[enigma]

I need to find a forum, or help site, to research a problem I am having with my computer. Does anyone have any favorite places to go that offer help with computer glitches?

Specifically, my XP machine occasionally gets very slow. I have opened the windows task manager and it shows that the processor is running at 100%. At the times of 100% usage, I am rarely running anything more than IE and solitare. After a few minutes, the usage goes back to the usual 3% and everything goes back to normal.

All help is greatly appreciated.

regards,
enigma

 

[surfnole]

Search on groups.google.com, you can find about anything.

On another note, try this, it works on NT and Win2K, not sure about XP.

Press Control-Alt-Delete and bring up task manager. That shows a list of running processes. Press the CPU column header, and it will sort them by CPU.

What is the process using all the CPU?

Once you have that process name, you can search yahoo, groups.google.com or Microsoft support website to see what the process is and how to disable it. Perhaps it is a virus.

When I installed Office 2000, Word used to spin my disk CPU every few minutes. It was some built in auto indexing feature with Word.

I can't stand the fact the every vendor seems to think its perfectly OK to throw stuff into your startup menu and system tray, chewing up all your resource.

There is a good tool to prevent this called Startup Monitor (freeware)

http://www.mlin.net/StartupMonitor.shtml

It will alert you any time anybody tries to alter your startup and ask you if you want to allow it.

Good luck.

 

[jetdriven]

try www.sysopt.com and go to the forums page. A lot of good help there.

 

[enigma]

Thanks for the responses. I've been forced to break out my dusty laptop because the desktop has gotten worse. The task manager shows that a process named svchost.exe is using 99% of the processor. I ended it. Now the start menu is gone. I can still access most functions by clicking on the my computer icon on the desktop, but I can't connect to the internet. Actually, I can connect, but every page says unable to find server . I had been trying to download MS service pack 1, and the download stopped before completion, now I can't get anything. I'm wondering if the partial download is the problem.

I will take the suggested steps, tommorrow. Today, I'm darned tired of fighting with computers.

regards,
enigma