My next door neighbour had the exact same problem.
*As Kaori said you need to go into you're Task Manager and Disable and un-wanted start-up programmes, ive found that when u disable 3 or more then you're CPU Useage will drop 20% at a time
@Person who skitted Vista
Tbh most people dislike vista, but at the end of the day I think you'll find that it works really fast on laptops as thats what im using at the moment. I prefere laptops with vista more then PC's with XP, always seems to run faster for me.
Vista is also good for people who haven't got a clue about computers (Me in a way), can do things like automatic scans + updates and it protects over 60% more viruses than XP ever will.
Moral of the story is Vista has much better to offer overall
(Except the annoying laggouts on 1.9 servers ><)
*Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong.
Don't give advise if you don't know what your on about.
You can't disable anything in "Task Manager", you can only end programs/process you can also monitor hardware/network from here also.
-------------------------------------------------
"
MSCONFIG" - Type this is "
RUN" and disable any unwanted start up programs, these will then end the process on startup - I would sugest before doing this, going through all your process and seeing what is used for what. As disableing one program in "
MSCONFIG" could end the process for more than one.
Also double check what you have in services as well as startup and if you are running vista HPrem/Ult try disabaling Aero, as this requires 1.5GB of memory in order to run properly and can hit your CPU upto 100%.
There is a lot of things you can do to sort high CPU usage, but you have to investigate the issue first and not expect people to give you loads of advise on what to do. You need to setup your own machine for the job that you want it to do, so disabaling un-necessary services and startup up programs is a good place to start.
Also use self help sites on getting the machine to run how you want to, if anything ever goes wrong you always have the recovery option.
VISTA SELFHELP 1
VISTA SELFHELP 2
XP SELFHELP 1
XP SELFHELP 2
There is enough information on the web to help you get what you want and to resolve any issue you may have, asking here is a good start. But you have to remember, most here don't have a clue what they are on about and only give advise from there own experience if any.