Quote Originally Posted by eyeswithoutaface
ctrl + alt + delete to get your windows task manager up, surely you know that?
Problem is that this doesn't display all running processes and threads. For some redicilous reason MS have decided to hide certain processes from task manager. It's easy as setting a flag in your code to hide your process, and obviously spyware and even other intentionally installed programs will hide there happily stealing CPU of cycles. One way you can check if this is happening is by looking at your "System Idle" process. If it's near 98% most of the time whilst nothing else is loaded (especially stuff like audio plugins which eat your CPU for breakfast) you're a happy camper. If it's jumping all over the show you can be sure something's not right.

My reccomended course of action for fixing this will be placed in a new thread since it'll be of use to almost any computer user. Bassically you should reinstall everything then ghost an image on a separate partion for later restoration. If you don't know what I'm talking about you should read my thread.