still getting high cpu...

[Shia Kyosuka]

I'm not sure why, but I'm still getting the ridiculous cpu problem.

I thought it stopped, but it was actually still happening.

So, Today, I turned off my computer, took the power chord out of my 80gb Seagate HDD, and turned back on the computer.

Right when I turned it on, I started a torrent download using azereus (the program that takes the most CPU usage) to test my computer.

My computer was and still is running at full speed while I did the following.

Opened Firefox.

Opened BitLord.

Opened Azereus.

Started a download using BitLord.

Started a download using Azuereus

Downloaded utorrent.

Started a download using utorrent.

started streaming a video on IGN.

and started posting this thread here.

downloaded the video.

Used Windows Media Player to play it (full speed).

So, I have concluded, my new 80gb hdd is the cause for my high CPU usage problems.

What can I do to fix this problem?

[Slater]

Hmm... maybe get more RAM? If it's constantly needing to read programs and files off of an auxiliary hard drive, things are gonna be a bit slow. Having more RAM will reduce how often it needs to read from the drive.

[Shia Kyosuka]

I already have 512!

I need even more?!

o.o

[Slater]

Either that or a faster CPU (or try running dual processors, tho I've never tried that before). It really depends on how much that drive needs to be read, and possibly you can't do anything. If it's an old drive, there's not much you can do to make it read any faster unless there's a way how you can take it apart and install more/faster read-heads, but I would not recommend that since drives are so terribly fragile to the slightest inhospitalities in their environment.

[shooraijin]

Is your second hard disk connected on a separate IDE bus, or slaved on the main one?

Some systems have a ridiculous architecture where only certain IDE busses, PCI cards, etc., have direct DMA access and others must either go through a bridge or (in some really cheap designs) through the CPU. In other words, to access the secondary controller, the CPU has to stop what it's doing when the hard disk is ready to transceive and move data off the crippled bus into RAM.

Also, if you have a mismatch between drive and bus, like the bus being ATA/66 but the drive is only ATA/33, or only supports PIO (computationally expensive), etc., you might see something like this.

The suggestion is to either try moving the drive around onto a different bus and see how your performance changes, or possibly buying a separate controller card for the new drive. If this is Serial ATA, you might be stuck buying another controller if you're out of connectors.

[Shia Kyosuka]

I think It's slaved...

Ok, I'll try moving around the HDD.

Hope this works. ._.

[Shia Kyosuka]

Ok, when I try to rearrange everything so that both HDD's will be primary and secondary masters, the computer will not boot.

It stops at mup.dll and won't pass for anything.

Does anyone know how to get passed that?

[Slater]

buy an uber harddrive and transfer data onto it?

[Shia Kyosuka]

I'm 16, dude. Can't do that. Besides, I JUST got the 80gb hdd.

When I rearranged everything back to the previous way that I had it, everything worked fine. :/

Isn't there any way I can rearrange everything and still be able to use windows?

EDIT: And now that I've rearranged and arranged everything back to the old way, the cpu usage problem has disappeared again.

It'll come back, I'm sure of it, so I'll keep you updated.

[shooraijin]

It might not. If you were getting a lot of soft errors because of a bad connection (which could also increase your CPU load because of retransmission and busy waiting), then this may solve it. I've seen that on flaky IDE controllers before, but you could conceivably get it from a bad or badly connected cable.

[Mithrandir]

Sounds like either:

1. Something is causing the extra cycles (think spyware/virus).
or
2. Your 2nd hard drive was encrypted, so it was having to do a LOT of work for every write. Whatever you do, don't set an encrypted drive to be the "swap disk" for your VM.