My laptop has 61 running processes and uses 98+ percent of CPU when no applications running. My desktop has 63 running processes and uses less than 5% CPU when no applications running. Why is my laptop eating up the CPU and what can I do about it?

adeena

You should probably understand what all the processes that are running on your machine are and possibly disable any that shouldn't be there.

Go to ProcessLibrary.com - The online resource for process information!. It's a fantastic website that tells you what each process is, and whether or not you should remove it.

-Adeena

HVAC888

61 Processes is quite a lot. Spending cpu resources during idle sounds like virus/trojans working.

Before disabling processes, etc. Boot into safe mode, and run your antivirus, spybot search and destroy, adaware, ccleaner. Run each one more than once, just to make sure.

Reboot to your Windows desktop, and run your antivirus, Ad-Aware, Spybot, ccleaner.

Check your add/remove programs and look for applications that are unknown and unistall them.

Reboot again, and type msconfig at the run prompt. Under the service tab, uncheck all un-necessary items. Do the same with the Startup tab.

Curlyben

Ouch, that is wayyyyy to many.
Now my latop, an admin box, runs 50 max and 35 on tick over.

If you can post a list of ALL the processes running at boot up we'll help you remove the unneeded ones.

As HVAC mentioned the use of CCleaner, I'll continue.
This app can control the start up processes.
Start CCleaner > Tools > Startup.
Post the program names and we'll advise further.