Computer running at 100% CPU Usage and not sure why

Isn't Window just wonderful?

 

Good suggestions guys, thanks.

I've never noticed this issue before, so not sure if the recent OEC upgrade may have affected this as well.

 

If you recently did an upgrade, very likely the culprit.

 

Actually, it is overall.

 

I closed Ecry and it sill showed 100% so I saw IEXPLORE.EXE ( all cap) keep consuming 80% of CPU I terminated that one and % went down.

 

Sounds like a memory leak problem.

How long has the computer been running without being rebooted? When you try to open a program, can you hear your hard-drive thrashing? Once you run out of physical memory (your DRAM or SRAM), the computer uses the harddrive to store process data -- which is in the magnitude of thousands of times slower than main memory access.

So most likely, your computer has been on for a very, very long time. Windows is notorious for slowly leaking memory and never collecting it, meaning that eventually every process run will be allocated space on the hard-drive, which will cripple your computer's performance.

Try rebooting every couple of days.

 

This is by far the best response.

Many normal applications (like a browser) can occasionally fire your CPU percentage to the roof.

 

Not like we have much of a choice. Bill Gates pretty much has the market cornered.

 

"Occasionally", sure... lots of programs send the CPU to 100% spike at launch... that's completely normal.... but that's not what OP is talking about.

 

I know this is extreme, but if all of these other suggestions fail, try reinstalling Windows. When I first bought my PC, after a couple of months I had this problem, and IBM reinstalled new MB, CPU etc, and finally reinstalled windows and that was the culprit. Apparently it can become corrupted.

Edit - I see gnome already suggested this...