CPU never runs over 5% of Maximum

[matthewhambly]

Spec

Vaio VGN-SZ5VWN/X
Intel Core 2 Duo T7400 2.16GHz
2Gb DDR2 SD Ram 533MHz
200Gb HD
nVidia GeForce Go 7400
Windows Vista

My Problem

The laptop is deathly slow all the time. When I look the the Vista Resource Manager it constantly says the CPU is running at 5% of its maximum and CPU usage is at 100%. No matter how intensive the program is that I run, the CPU never goes over 5% of its maximum, but using 100% of this 5% if that makes sense.

It seems like something has gone wrong with the power saving. Does anyone have any hints for fixing this?

[kee-lo_]

In Start > Control Panel > Power do you have it on full performance?

[matthewhambly]

Yes, it's on Full Performance right now.

This happens for any power plan.

[matthewhambly]

No one has any ideas? It's wierd. When I turned it on today, it was at 100% of Maximum CPU. So I loaded up my recursive PHP script to put the CPU at maximum load. As soon as the CPU went to max load, the % of maximum CPU went to 5% and everything ground to a halt.

Could this be caused by a virus? I am going to format the laptop today if I cant fix it.

[kee-lo_]

Are you sure your script is able to really do that? There are CPU testing programs you can use, Aida32 used to do it.