I have Windows Vista Business Edition 32-bit on an M1330 laptop with a 2.2Ghz CPU and 2GB of RAM. For several days now I have a serious problem with the performance, quite regularly the CPU usage spikes to 100% although I have no intensive applications running: for example, currently only web browsers and Outlook. I really have no idea what I've recently changed that could cause such problems .
Things that I've already tried;
- Motherboard BIOS upgrade of A05 to A12
- AVG Free full-system scan, no viruses
- Windows Defender scan to check for root kits
- Disable Services that are not needed
- Updated several drivers
Information about the system performance monitoring event:
Scenario: System Responsiveness
Analysis result: Analysis could not be performed in time. There is a possible serious performance issue
Regarding the processes causing the CPU load; it's usually a combination of different programs that really should not be overloading the processor:
http://nutkenz.net/tmp/processes.pngI really have no idea what I can try ... Is this a hardware malfunction? I sometimes see around 100 Hard Faults / sec in the Resource Monitor of Vista, but I've read that this is not really indicative of a problem, though adding more RAM wouldn't hurt either. However, it is suddenly that the PC is slow at times and the amount of RAM has never changed; 2GB should be plenty.
Some more symptoms appeared since I first wrote this;
1. When I was using the laptop, with only Chrome Google, MSN and Outlook running, the screen suddenly acted strange: there was a blue-violet glow and a uniform pattern of stripes. This lasted about 2-3 seconds and then the screen went back to normal, but the system was frozen, I could not move the cursor and bashing the keyboard didn't help either.
2. I suspect that hard drive might have something to do with the problem: I've just tried copying 5000 small images (100 bytes each) to my PDA via ActiveSync and then everything turned extremely slow (100% CPU usage and transfer was estimated to last for 5 days). When I finally managed to click "Cancel", the system resumed at normal speed. I have disabled the Vista Search Index Service fully because this may be causing some of the delays. However, it is certainly not the cause since there's still other symptoms.
3. I left the laptop running idle for a while and when I returned and logged in, it took longer than usual. The screen stayed black for some time and then I noticed this icon had appeared (clicking it doens't provide any additional information):
http://nutkenz.net/tmp/warning-icon.jpg4. When I tried copying a 4MB movie to my HDD with 27GB of free space, a message popped up: "The following error occured while importing CIMG4312.MOV: Not enough storage is available to complete this operation."
5. I tried going to the Device Center through the Control Panel, but at first the following happened () and after I tried again several times, it did load but without any icons:
http://nutkenz.net/tmp/missing-icons.pngStart Free Trial
