crippled PC advice
 

In my task manager the Image Name:System, User Name:SYSTEM has a cpu value of between 96 and 99 making my CPU Usage 100%.

This has crippled my computer - any suggestions

backup - format - reinstall.

How much stuff is running in the backgroud? Do you have Realplayer, Quicktime, etc? They don't have to run in the background, disable as many applications as you can, restart and check the resource again.

.... definitely don't worry about System..

That "CPU" column in task manager is the CPU time. System Idle Process or System at 99 does NOT mean that it is using 99% of your CPU. It means that 99% of the time the system is running, it is Idle. This is a good thing. Your CPU usage is likely only 99% because something else is constantly processing/loading into RAM. Sort the processes by MEM USAGE, and look at the biggest hogs.. something is loaded into your RAM, most likely a virus or spyware, that is eating up your RAM/CPU.. and its not System.

Here's a link to common system processes:

http://www.liutilities.com/products/...ibrary/system/

Go through every process you suspect of being unncessary/viral and put the filename into google. If it's SEAP.exe.. search for SEAP.exe. All your hits will come back about that process.. and whether its necessary or not. Once you find one that isn't necessary, search antivirus sites to see if its associated with a known virus.

There's really no harm to be done if you accidently kill a system process.. it'll require a reboot, but the process will reload automatically. Unfortunately, this is also true for viral processes.. so they must be removed from the computer before they will stop auto-loading themselves as a service..

Check out the CPU usage history (Task Manager in the Performance tab). Does it seem to go up and down in spikes? If so, get into your BIOS and try disabling the onboard network/wireless capabilities and disable or enable hyperthreading if your computer supports it. I had a similar problem and that was the culprit.

loaded it up in safe mode, so was able to run my virus scans and found a bunch of spyware causing the problems - all ok now