Quad Core Help Please

I am running a AMD 9500 Quad Core with 2GB Ram and a 1gb Nvidia Graphic card along with 2 Sata drives inside PC. Everything has been fine until I noticed just AFTER I did a back up that PC seemed to be running slow. On checking it seems that core 0 and 1 are fine but cores 2 and 3 are going mental with the result that the PC is constantly running at around 40 percent in Task manager. Nothing shows in Task Manager to account for such activity. I have disabled everything that was possible to disable and its still the same. Have even done a system restore with no joy. Does anyone have any ideas?. I am a bit lost on this one.

I think you indeed have such an unusual problem that it isn't easy to find the answer and it might be a lot faster to do a reinstall and use Acronis Bootdisk to create a backup of your C: instead of using the Vista backup service.
In my experience it usually took several days of frustration until i started to use Acronis and ever since I haven't had any need to break my head over any unexplainable mysterious occurences which may or may not plague your system at any given time.

That brings me to my guess. If a process is loading and stopping then it might explain the spikes but if it is a continuous cpu usage then it probably would be a faulty driver issue, not related to your backup. You say you haven't done anything but did you disable certain services like we all do when we install Vista? Perhaps one of them was related to the backup service and is now activated because you initiated the service and it is looking for anotehr service which you have disabled. Or there are some people as with XP system restore who complain about the cpu load on their system and which disappeared after disabling the System Restore service.

Which is questionable because as I understand it, that service doesnt actually actively monitor your disk changes but just by default creates 'snapshots' twice a day of your drive and records thus only the changed files. But it might be that in your case it is and then you would like others be helped by disabling system restore. Also perhaps 2 Gb is a little bit on the low side seeing all the other yummy goodies you have, quad core/1 gb 9000+ nvidia card?.

Just that you said it happened after you used the backup service, logically that would be the culprit. But I never would use the inbuilt Vista service for that because I think it is better to create a copy of your drive outside windows by having to reboot and load a backup program. My Mainboard (Gigabyte) actually has its own service in the BIOS, perhaps yours has one too.

+++++++++++++
I have: Vista Ultimate SP1 July 2008
and run it with pagefile disabled. ( could Vista be paging continuously?) Perhaps thats worth trying too if you get 4 Gb. ( you will only able to use 3.2 Gb of it though in Vista 32-bit. If your backup service is eating away at your RAM then your CPU would spike while its paging it. If you would disable it with 2 gb prolly you would get a lot of Virtual Mem warnings.)

This post has been edited by cranial: Sep 19 2008, 06:10 PM

not having had an AMD for a couple of years but..

i know the older X2 939 chips needed a "dualcore fix" to work correctly ,has this been sorted out now ? ,or do these newer AMD quads also need a fix ?

Ive also disabled system restore/index search as it was eating my HD space away as was still hungry ,like Cranial i also use Acronis ,much less hassle.

Sorry Guy's, forgot to say I was using XP. An update on this though. This was annoying me to the point where I was up all night but at least I know whats causing it but not why. I have a Nvidia 1GB 8500GT Graphics card installed. I was having trouble on several occasions that it lost its HDTV settings and froze on reboot but that problem had gone but on a hunch I unplugged the DVI cable that was feeding media to my TV and lo and behold when I rebooted the cpu was back to normal so something going on with the graphics card.
If anyone has any ideas on this I would appreciate it.

So, have you checked for an driver update for your graphics card?

yep, have the very latest m8. was first thing i did.

Have you uninstall and reinstall the driver since you started having the problem?

Yes Tsog, I did that too and processor was still at a steady 40% plus. The only thing that stopped it was unplugging the dvi/hdmi lead from Graphics card on PC.

try a diff hdmi cable ? and /or switch the gfx card and the hdmi cable on the opposite ones they r currently on.

also try a diff gfx card if possible? could be a dodgy dvi socket on the card altho probably unlikely if it actually works,but might be worth a go if your desp.

also check you display settings/multiple monitor setup etc.

Sometimes it's the driver itself.Have you tried rolling back to the original driver.Just cause it's the newest doesn't mean it's the best one for your configuration found that out myself when updated my new drivers for my xfx gt7950 extreme cards.Running sli ran newest drivers had massive issues rolled it back to an older version and had no problems since.Might be an issue might not? also before I forget with nvidia cards they off load the processing onto your cpu for hdtv as the ati cards have them built into the card,just some extra info i know they have software drivers but the ati seem to work more efficiently than the nvidia drivers

This post has been edited by Stiffchicken: Sep 20 2008, 09:47 PM

@xu, Cant try a different HDMI cable mate. This one cost me 70 quid as is and there was no trouble with on my previous PC. I also dont have another PCI-E Graphics card as this is the first machine I have had that has utilised it.

@Stiffchicken, I originally had old drivers installed when problem just suddenly occurred. It was then I installed new drivers which made no difference. I have had several power cuts lately which cant do a PC any good. Two mini ones lasting just over a minute and another two which were much longer.

OK snooks when you say power cuts are you talking power cuts to everything in your place or just in the pc.Could it be if its in the pc itself the powersupply might be getting hot or shorting itself out.Also do you still have your cable unplugged try plugging it back in to a different hdmi connection or try through vga or dvi connection have two on my 7950s and one does not work for some strange reason as well?may or not be an issue.Obviously you are still running the pc how do you have the gpu connected to your monitor now?

I'd try disabling some controllers in the BIOS (USB, Firewire, Wifi, floppy, ...) -- maybe one of them is keeping the processor busy?

In ControlPanel>System>Hardware>DeviceManager, on the View menu, select 'View by type' and then look through the IRQ list: it's normal to see some things share the same IRQ, but if 2 big things are on the same channel, then that might cause a problem.

This post has been edited by ADL242: Sep 21 2008, 04:02 PM

@Stiffchicken, I have the VGA plugged in to my monitor as always. The Hdmi connection was always used to hook up to TV. The power cuts were just that. The whole flat went down.

hmmm not quite sure what the problem could be, besides perhaps a bad hdmi cable which I doubt or something in the connection on the card which sounds more reasonable.Don't get why your processor would be ramming at 40%. You obviously ran task manager,was it showing up anything that would be drawing that much processor power at the time? If you hadn't perhaps try hooking up the hdmi again and then run task manager and see what processes are running and start turning certain ones off that you know won't boot you down and see if one process that is running and turned off idles the cpu to normal running speed

I did indeed run Task manager mate and it showed nothing that was using that amount of processor. I have since plugged the HDMI back in and when I do the PC wont boot up now. Just freezes, take it out and switch on and the PC is fine. I have this setup to watch media on my large HDTV so this is a nuisance of a problem.