I am running Vista Ultimate, 1.66ghz dual core and 3 gigs ram. The only applications that I am running are Digsby IM, Windows Sidebar, and firefox yet 60% of my ram is eaten up and my processor usage will not go below 75%. I was running zune software but closing that didn't really do much. Any suggestions?
I was having a similar problem but using windows xp, where my cpu usage on my dual core was running a 90 percent (both cores) everytime including no load on computer. This happen even when I had no other programs running including disabling my firewall and antivirus. I was able to trace the problem to the motherboard built-in soundcard. When I installed a PCI card ($15.00 cost). My cpu usage went back down to 5 percent with no load. Most people would blame it as a software problem but sometimes it can be hardware related. I didn't try to update the onboard soundcard drivers, that could have been the problem. Either way I had my problem fixed.