Did HP "hard" recovery. Many virus scans. Many file cleanings, defrags, new clock battery. Chkdsk's, 1 virus up, cleaned mostly minor issues. 15 hrs+ with HP tech support. $99 later, still very slow. Am I duck in tall weeds? BTW HP pavilion a1230n, AMD 64, Windows XP. 1 person needs an answerI do too

It could be a sub-process or application that's running in the background and taking all the CPU resources.To find and display what could be the problem try Process Explorer:http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896653.aspxSysInternals Forums: http://forum.sysinternals.com/Worth Reading: The Case of the System Process CPU Spikeshttp://blogs.technet.com/markrussinovich/archive/2008/04/07/3031251.aspxOnce you have Process Explorer installed and running:In the taskbar select View and check: 'Show Process Tree' and the 'Show Lower Pane' options.Move your mouse cursor over any column in the right hand pane and right click and check the following boxes: 'Command Line' and 'Version'.Then expand the process named 'Explorer' (click on the + sign) In the column on the left named 'CPU', look for any high CPU usage.Next click on the CPU column to sort the processes by %CPU usage (Highest to Lowest).Move the mouse cursor over any process, you should see a popup with some detailed info.Then mouse over the process that's using most or all the CPU %.Then click on that process to highlight it,Now that it's highlighted, right click and from the options listed select: 'Search Online'.This should display what out there on the web about that process.You can also double click on any process to open up a more detailed 'Properties' window.Note: some entries like Explorer, System/Services, and Svchost may need to be expanded to show the detail (sub processes), in this case click on the + located to the left of the entry.An alternate method when using Process Explorer is to double click on the Graph just below the Menu bar.This will open the 'System Information' window, which has a larger display of all three graphs. Move your mouse over any spike in the CPU Usage graph to see what process/application or service is the cause of the spike.Another tool available is: RAMMaphttp://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/ff700229.aspxJShttp://www.pagestart.comNever be afraid to ask. This forum has some of the best people in the world available to help.