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[Lord Shonus]

I still play a few Win98-only games, so I took my old AMD 450 and set it up to dual-boot win98 and XP (I used this as my primary computer for several years under XP.) The XP desktop is running the CPU at 50%, and 98 is similarly slow. I suspect hardware damage, but I have no idea how it could have been damaged or when. Any ideas on what to look for?

[Jookia]

Upgrade to 98SE.

[Lord Shonus]

That's what I'm using.

[Volatar]

If you have a dual core processor and your staying at 50% CPU, then SOME process is trying to take all the CPU power it can find, and is hogging one of your cores. Go into task manager, and look for which process is running at 50% processor. It sounds like malware of some form to me.

[Lord Shonus]

This is a really old AMD 450 mhz. The windows installs are brand new, and ran like this out of the box.

[Volatar]

Ok, so not malware.

Still: What specific process is taking all this power?

[Lord Shonus]

Whatever program is running. Firefox, xult, and ADOM. seem to be the worst.

[Volatar]

Well you see, 450mhz is less than a quarter of what you would find in a REALLY LOW end PC these days. Those programs are using that much CPU because thats how much CPU they need. You can't multitask on such hardware 

[Lord Shonus]

ADOM will run on a 486.

[Googolplexed]

Whatever program is running. Firefox, xult, and ADOM. seem to be the worst.

I'm surprised firefox runs on that CPU at all.

Seriously, that programs are more suited to a modern system.

EDIT: Ninja'd

Anyway, even if it does, the basic array of programs that people install on a new computer probebly slow it to a crawl.

Also, just because it says 486, doesn't mean it will actually run on one well. That just means it will run at all

[Lord Shonus]

First, I ran this thing as my primary computer for YEARS. Everything I'm trying to run used to run fine.

Second, xult is basically Ultima VII.

[Googolplexed]

First, I ran this thing as my primary computer for YEARS. Everything I'm trying to run used to run fine.

Second, xult is basically Ultima VII.

I used my old p3 for years too.

I guarantee you that firefox will not run well/at all on that machine.

I don't no about other apps, but if firefox is laggy then its not the machine.

Also, Xult != Ultima VII, the under-the-hood changes would more then make it possible to be laggy.

Programs change, stuff moves on. I sometimes have problems with FF on my netbook, and the atom chip is alot faster.
Modern programs use alot more cpu time then older versions of the same program.

My advice.
Any game that can run on your modern computer, use that
Don't install ANY programs other then stuff that won't run on your modern computer.

If firefox or something is installing services or other stuff, then your computer will slow down

[Vucar Fikodastesh]

I ran all three of those applications on my old 336 with XP. Both ADOM and Exult should run just fine, but Firefox will run badly. This isn't just a case of the computer being old.

I have no idea what the problem could be. Sorry.

[Googolplexed]

Yeah, looking back at the original post, if the desktop is going slowly.....

The only thing would be if you installed a program that ran a service or something that was slow.

A hardware issue wouldn't cause task-manager to report 50% cpu usage from explorer.exe(Well, I guess possibly, if it is really slow, but if that was the case, it would be alot more noticeable

[Lord Shonus]

Like I said, both windows installs are runnign hellaciously slow with clean installs. I tried some DOS programs without too much trouble, but most of the DOS stuff I have handy are not very taxing.