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Hello Gang,
I have noticed lately that when browsing the web my computer will rev really high and I get a warning from Norton 360 that Internet Explorer is causing high cpu usage. How can I tame this beast? I dont have many programs running in the background.Just Norton 360 really. I am using Windows XP Home edition and am using a Dell 4700C computer with a Pentium 4 3.00 GHz processor with two gig of RAM.
Geo
Depending on the page that's visited (and the amount and type of graphics and active content on it), that is likely normal.
The XP PC I am replying from has an AMD Athlon 64 x2 Dual Core Processor 4600+, 2 GB RAM and a ATI Radeon X1300 Pro Graphics card with 256 MB of RAM. When visiting CNN.com, IE uses up to 60% CPU for a few seconds. Google Chrome is close to 40% CPU. Firefox, 35% or so.
I don't know but could one assume that to at least some extent, chips like a Pentium 4 will work a bit harder than newer ones?? I would think that having 2 GB of RAM would help but only so much...
Yes, it seems to act up when I visit sites that are graphically intense.I just upgraded to 2 gig of RAM from 512!! Ha! It helped a little I suppose. Oh well I guess I can live with it.
That is normal for my computer as well. These days everyone thinks they needs several video streams on each page, as well as scripts that do who knows what. You can change browser settings to stop some of that nonsense if desired.
You might want to install Firefox and/or Chrome as well. Some sites work better in one browser than in another, and if you get a site that is being particularly troublesome it may behave just fine in a different browser. I've used all 3 for a few years now.
Mozilla Firefox
Google Chrome
I too am having this problem. I have 4700 Dell-Pentium 4-3gh--500 mb ram Had no problems until about 3 months ago after Firefox updated. Tech told me harddrive gone. replaced it and same thing. Bought a new p.c. Haven't set it up as of yet. Only have problem morning and then late afternoon.
What does Task Manager say is using the CPU when this happens? Are there any other indicators that are out of the ordinary, like the hard drive activity light being on most of the time, network activity lights showing lots of activity, etc.?
Task manager says fire fox is running.Internet act. light will be blinking and harddrive light blinks fast. Also when I have been away any length of time(maybe 30 min.) desktop slowly comes back ,left side and then right side
Cris - have you scanned for malware? I assume that you have closed all open instances of Firefox when this happens.
Go to the Firefox button in the top left, click on Help, then select "Restart with add-ons disabled". See if that makes any difference.
http://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/Safe%20Mode