2.4 GHz p4 processor easily maxed out

[mule]

I hope someone on this board can help me solve this riddle...

I have a Compaq Evo 1020v laptop with the following specs:


Operating System Microsoft Windows XP Professional
OS Service Pack Service Pack 3, v.3300
CPU Type Intel Pentium 4A, 2400 MHz (6 x 400)
Motherboard Name Compaq Evo N1020v
Motherboard Chipset ATI Radeon IGP-340M
System Memory 224 MB (PC2100 DDR SDRAM)

The problem is that the cpu hits 100% very easily, for example moving a window around on the desktop quickly, or even just browsing a flash heavy site. Flash videos are unplayable as everything will lock up after 30 seconds of say a youtube video.

I've tried re-installing Windows as well as a few different Linux distros but the problem persists across all OS's.

Anyone have an Idea what could be causing this? I am really at a loss with this thing. It is so slow as to be practically unusable. My old 500 MHz Thinkpad with 128Mb ram has better performance! (i need to use it if I want to watch any online videos!)

Any insights would be greatly appreciated.

 

[Anti-Trend]

Doing a little Google searching on your laptop, it seems to be a troublesome model. What I'm interested in is whether or not the CPU ever reaches its peak clock of 2.4GHz, or if it's stuck in a lower-power/lower-clock mode. In Linux could you run

cat /proc/cpuinfo

and post the results?

 

[megamaced]

The problem most likely because the laptop only has 256MB of RAM. Any modern operating system requires more than this, especially Windows XP. You'll probably find with Windows that it is having to page your physical memory to virtual memory, thus you will notice increased disk and cpu usage.

Short term fix would be to disable any start up items you don't require. Long term fix would be to upgrade the memory to at least 512MB.