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[jayhaytch]

Hi. I have a dell laptop and have just reformated and reloaded XPpro and Office pro 2002. I play a lot of music and watch DVD's - the problem is that about every 30 - 45 seconds I get a CPU spike reaching up to 42% and this affects the sound cauusing it to stop/jump. It is impossible to enjoy any sound whether music or DVD.

I have tried too find out the cause in Taskmanager and Process Explorer - Sysinternals - but it appears to be coming from System4 and I cannot get any further information as to what might be causing the high CPU spikes. It does not matter whether or not I am on line or whether or not Norton is running - the high CPU is regular and constant without any programmes running.

I am so confused and would appreciate any help with this.

Thanks

Jayhaytch

[_grandpa_]

Welcome
Have you tried the latest audio drivers from dell's website?
Any luck with Windows Update?
Since it's a fresh installation, did the problem occur even before you install office or any other program?

[Dash Rendar]

System4? Can you get a screenshot of your Task Manager and post it up?

Have you tried booting into Safe Mode to see if the problem persists?

If not, then it must be a running process that's causing the issue. The next step would be to boot back in with 'normal' mode, and run 'msconfig' from Start -> Run. Go into the 'Startup' tab, and uncheck everything. Then reboot, and you should find the system runs fine. Now, add them back, half at a time. E.g. recheck half of them and reboot. If the problem returns, you know the issue is in one of the processes you just checked. If not, it's in the other half. Add back (or remove, as appropriate) the remaining processes, half at a time, until you've finally tracked the one process causing the issue. This is the normal approach.

Failing that, it could by virus or spyware causing the issue. Make sure you're AV is fully up to date, and try running a full antispyware sweep.

[chip]

How often doe this spike occur and are you sure the sound only jumps when the spike happens? I echo everything Dash and gramps has already said but I hope its not one of these things that happens every so often and you are just being incredibly anal and dont want it to happen EVER, because it does happen from time to time.

[Mr Anderson]

Hiya guys,
And girls, let me elaborate, I haven’t looked at the laptop, just spoke to jayhaytch briefly on the phone, apparently this problem was present on this laptop in the past, and then the owner applied a patch, or updated some drivers, (he can’t quite remember) (this was to solve a totally different problem) but it solved the issue, the problem is consistent, as in all the time, not just now and again, its every song or DVD, in fact, any played back media, and about twice a minute, the sound just cuts out, I referred him here, as its hard for me to get the lappy to my house, and I don’t get down to jayhaytch house that often, he is getting a new HD setup with blue ray, and doesn’t get online that often, but, I’ll get him to post an update to this problem ASAP