HELP CPU is at 50% all the time, Studio 15

1.
I got my laptop back in august of 2008. Everything has been good up until a few weeks ago. From the moment I turn my computer on the CPU sit at 50% usage. I have no idea what is causing this. I can restart the laptop and as soon as vista boots up the cpu is sitting at 50% usage. According to the task manger windows explorer (explorer.exe) is using the cpu the most.
This is while at idle.

What could cause this? I thought maybe firefox was causing the problem so I uninstalled it but that only worked for about a day


2.
On a side note, my laptop will not stay in standby. I close the lid it goes into standby and then a few min later comes back on. When it comes back on the fan is also running nonstop. Sometimes after it comes back from standby the mute and volume up buttons will be blinking. the buttons still work but they blink. I have already checked the power setting and they are not preventing standby

 

I have seen the same problem. Only it was to buy a laptop. Looks like I already know what the problem is the charger. Check it at you at 90 watts or 65 watts. I have a 65 watt, when I connect a 90 watt problem disappears, and the laptop starts to work faster. With 90 watt charger for my Vista laptop is better appreciated. For example, a processor T5750 4.9 was 4.6 RAM 4.9 was 4.3.
I am interested in who is rating the video card? I have a 4.0 as a game graphics and at the Aero system Vista. But when I install Windows 7 score was 5.3 for gaming graphics and 4.1 for the Aero. Others assessment (processor, RAM, hard drive) not change as on Windows Vista. Perhaps this is due to the fact that Windows 7 installed drivers newer than I am now stayat? It is a pity that I was unable to verify whether the game faster. (I have version 8.533 driver at Windows 7 version to be more later)
All who have a Studio 1535, tell me what you have drivers and what score you video card have in Vista.
It seems to me that my laptop could run faster. Sorry for my bad English

 

okay, i have the new 9.2 driver i get 4.0 in both. I run vista 64bit.
Did you try to overclock your card? I am guessng you have the studio 15 with the ati mobility radeon hd 3450.

 

you're right, I have ati mobility radeon hd 3450, and I not overclock my videocard.
I wonder why Windows 7 (64 bit) has my video card in the assessment of 5.3 points. (Tested twice, shooting down a pre-assessment)
You have a driver 9.2 worked better the old? Where you can download (on the site dell are available only old driver)

 

I had this same problem ... I had Vista 32-bit and it was fine, moved to 64-bit and explorer would get stuck at 50%, not sure what I did different, probably not 64-bit related though, maybe a new driver has an issue. I moved to the Windows 7 beta so I didn't try to figure it out. To fix it though I would hit ctrl-alt-del, goto processes, and do an end task on explorer.exe. Then I would click the new task button and type explorer, and the explorer would reload and this time have normal CPU usage.

 

Could it be related to the power saving profile used?

 

I have tried using different power profiles. Same thing happens

 

Does it fix it if you end explorer.exe and starting a new copy? Not really an optimal solution, a permanent fix would be better but it did work for me

 

You need a 90w charger its almost impossible for a studio with a decent processor or the dedicated graphics card to run on 65w. It's strange they should have given you a 90w charger. What happens when its unplugged? If it runs well its most likeley the charger.

 

Yes it worked but like you said this is not a permanent fix


Think norton could cause this?

 

Do you have any nicks in your power cord or get a message that says that it doesn't recognize the power supply? I had the same problem and when I replaced the power cord my computer started working a lot faster. Windows Experience Index went from a 2.8 to a 4.8 based on the RAM and proccessor ratings. Just a thought, might want to give it a shot.

 

The power supply probably werent getting enough watts into your computer.

 

Though I think you should have the 90w with the HD3450, I'm not sure why not having enough power would cause a single application, explorer.exe, to peg one of the CPU cores... I'm not sure it's related.

 

Because the processor is not getting enough power theofore making it run slower.

 

yea, did you open up the performance monitor in the task manager? look at where it says x% max frequency

then you can tell if your processor is working at its full speed or limiting itself.

also, check and see if there are any BIOS updates available for your model

 

You run a free program like cpuz from cpuid.com to check the speed, normally a processor can only go to about half multipler/speed at the slowest speed, automatically going to full speed or somewhere inbetween under load. But even at the lowest speed it should be more then enough to run Windows without maxing the a core out, especially at idle. He said the problem does go away when he forces explorer.exe to close and re-starts a new copy, too.

 

I just fixed this problem on my desktop.
It has nothing to do with power or batteries or hardware.

It could be a number of different but related issues. Get Process Explorer and run it. You can right-clcik on explorer.exe and click properties....then go to the threads tab and see what thread is causing the issue.

From there you can Kill the process for a temp fix...but if you really want to fix it then you will need to track down what the thread is caused by.

Could be a process running on startup or could be something else...

Post what the thread is here and I can help you out.

For me...my thread had to deal with the way that windows previews AVI files. It had a corrupt AVI file and everytime I opened a windows folder my cpu went to 99%..your cpu is most likely dualcore so it is only maxing out one of your cores.

 

Sorry here is the link for process explorer

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896653.aspx

 

I was able to fix mine ... it turns out it was the digital persona software that was causing the explorer issues on my system. I disabled it under msconfig and the problem went away. Can still log into Windows using the fingerprint reader, though I suspect it may no longer work in IE ... I use firefox which isn't supported so it doesn't matter to me. This is on 32-bit Vista, I had no problems in 64-bit Windows 7.

 

This program is incompatible with Vista X64!
See the difference (IDLE):