I have a two year old HP Compaq 6710s laptop, and since yesterday, the second I plug in my power cable, my CPU usage goes up from a normal amount to 100% immediately, making my computer really really slow. Is there anything I can do to fix this? Do you think there's something wrong with the cable or the computer?
i wouldn't of thought that would of been a problem charging, have you tried different sockets around the house ? that's all i can think of at the moment
I think that you need a new battery for the computer or you need to buy a new charger.
In most laptop configurations there are things that are setup to run only when the laptop is plugged in. For example, antivirus scans, adware scans, and such can be set so that they only run when plugged in. It is possible that the unit has been unplugged for awhile and the system suddenly recognizes its plugged in and all the software tries to run thus bogging it down. This is only a hypothesis. The best way to know for sure is to check the Task Manager to find out whats hogging everything. If you don't know, you can open the task manager by either doing CTRL-ALT-DELETE and selecting task manager or by going Start-Run and type in 'taskmgr'. In the window, the applications tab should show what apps are running, the Processes tab should show you all the processes and their memory consumption, and the Performance tab should show you all your memory and CPU untilization. I would start with the Processes tab and see what is consuming the most memory. You can sort by size by clicking on the MemUsage column heading. The processes with the highest memory are the ones to start with. ALso check the Applications tab and see what is running at the time. I would check these while running on battery, and then plug the system in and check them again to see what is different. Whatever has changed is most likely the culprit.
