I've had my prebuilt PC for almost two years, and today I woke up to find everything running super slow. My CPU usage is always above 70%, even when I'm doing nothing. The bizarre part is that different applications are taking up CPU power every second, so it doesn't seem like a specific application is to blame. My CPU temperature is about 45°C while idle and goes up to 55°C when I'm just browsing or watching Netflix, which seems normal. I've scanned for malware using Kaspersky, Malwarebytes, and Microsoft Defender but came up empty. Is there something I'm missing? Any help would be much appreciated!
2 Answers
High CPU usage at idle can often be due to background processes. It's a good idea to check the Task Manager to see which processes are using the most CPU. Look under the Details tab and sort by CPU to spot the culprits. Another common issue is browsers like Chrome or Edge; they can consume a lot of resources if you have many tabs or extensions open. How many tabs are you usually running?
It sounds like you've already done a lot to narrow things down! Have you checked for any Windows services that might be running in the background, like updates or indexing? Those can sometimes spike CPU usage unexpectedly. It's also worth noting that some antivirus scans can cause high CPU load, especially if they're happening while you're not actively using the PC.
Thanks for the tips! I haven't opened Task Manager to check for background processes during high usage yet, so I'll definitely give that a go. As for my browser usage, I typically keep a few tabs open, but today I was just using Opera with a maximum of three tabs.