I am running a fairly decent computer on windows XP SP1. Its on a 10k
rpm sata hard drive with 1 gigabyte of ram and an Nvidia FX5950 Ultra
video card.

Im having a problem that seems to occur semi-randomly. Sometimes when
I alt-tab out of a game or I close a game (no matter what game it is),
the system will slow down immensly. In my task manager, it says that
"System" is taking up upwards of 80% of my CPU resources ( "System",
not "System Idle Process" ). It jumps between around 30 and 80 but
will not go back down to 0-2 like it normally works at until i
restart.

I ran a process viewer and the increase in CPU usage was marked by an
increase in my Deferred Procedure calls. I scanned with 2 updated
virus checkers (Norton and AVG) and found nothing. I used spybot
search and destroy and Ad-Aware and they both came up clean (I'm very
well versed in keeping my computer safe).

I recently installed a new SATA hard drive that i believe nearly
coincided with the start of these problems. However, i unplugged the
data cable and the problem persisted. I also recently installed a demo
for the game Battlefield 2. It said i needed newer video card drivers
so I installed new drivers. This also coincaded with roughly the time
the problem started. I uinstalled the drivers and used a driver
cleaner to make sure I got rid of them. I then found even newer
drivers from NVidias website and after using the driver cleaner again,
i installed those. The problem is still persisting (I thought it might
be a driver conflict).

---

Clarification of Question by veto1024-ga on 06 Jul 2005 16:42 PDT

I recently uninstalled the newer drivers and cleaned the system again.
I installed an older version of the video card drivers and the problem
continued.