According to Windows Task Manager on XP, my CPU Usage is 100%. It's always been like this.Just wondering if that's normal for my system? (see specs below)THanks!!P41.9512 MB RAM40GB HDD @7200RPMWin XP PROATI RADEON 64MB

I don't run XP but I would seriously doubt that it would be normal for your CPU to be running at 100% utilization all of the time. Go to http://www.iarsn.com/index.html#/download.html and get TaskInfo. It's shareware, but you can at least run it once and see what process is taking up all of your processing time. If you decide to try it, let us know what it was.Mike

Just wanted to say that I don't see a need for a program like that.In XP you just select the Processes tab on the Taskman, and you'll see which process takes how much of the CPU. The "idle process" should take up anything that is left. You can even sort them in order of CPU time. Just click the CPU header.In any case, 100% is not normal if you're referring to the value shown on the Performance tab. I would expect serious slowness in that case.Ciao,Dave :)

thanks people i think i've figured out the program that used the CPU so much. it was the Rage3D overclocker tweak (fahcore_65.exe) in the task manager. it used almost 96%. i've uninstalled it, just to see, and CPU usage is now not above 10%! My temperature reading on MBM5 has dropped from almost 48C to 40C. I didnt realise the Rage3D program could heat up my system like that! Thanks again! WHOA! my temp is now 35C on MBM5! Does this mean I can overclock even further?

Wow! Well as for the overclocking, there is one golden rule:Be careful!!I have no personal experience of overclocking but you should be OK as long as you have proper cooling. But also note that the lifetime of the processor will be shorter the higher temperature it is running at.Good luck. :)Dave

The fact that it has been using all of the spare CPU capacity suggests that the program has not been working correctly. If something is doing this then there is a very high chance that it has crashed - and working your CPU @ 100% for an extended period is really going to heat it up !!

If the CPU is properly cooled it can run at 100% without overheating for extended periods. It's designed for that...Overclocked CPUs are of course an exception to this. They can overheat easily. If just dropping the CPU load causes the temperature of the CPU to drop by 25%, it is not cooled enough.

On my 2.0ghz 512mb RAM with a 128MB GeForce card on a XP Home OS, I get 99% usage with FS2002 running. It shows that FS2002 is using all of it. Is that normal? I have FSMeteo running, Flight Deck Companion running as well as SB and Roger Wilco. System does not seem to be slow though?

Hi Eric,FS2K2 is a very cpu intensive program, and it will use most of the free processor resources when running. So you have nothing to worry about.