I am going to have to agree with Mad_Dog. There are hundred of different reasons why you system can be slowing down. Trying to figure it out is nearly impossible if you do not even know what you installed, removed, or some simple option change in a program when your problem started. So just, reformat the damn thing if a windows repair does not work. The best thing to do is partition you hard drive into two parts; one for Windows and one to keep your documents folder and an image of you system. Partition Magic is awesome for creating partitions and drive image works great for creating backup images of your system. I am constantly installing new software on my system. It always and will always eventually become corrupted, but 20 minutes later, my system is spring fresh clean with all my favorite appz and settings already installed.

I agree with both of you but, when playing games on a E-Machine or really any box out there playing high end games your system is going to spike to 100%.

As for safe mode not bumping to 100% because your running Windows in half. Your really only using the shell of Windows thus not causeing it to spike to 100%. Seriously don't worry about it now if your spiking 100% when not playing games that is a different story. Tell your boyfriend not to trip it's only a computer.

Well, we figured something out..... the system overload seems to have been related to something calling itself WSup.exe and also something calling itself WToolsA.exe. I don't know if these were supposed to be there or not....but they were in Program Files/Common Files/WinTools Does anybody know if this is supposed to be there? I thought all the windows stuff would be in the windows folder. I haven't intentionally downloaded anything like this, though this appears to have been in there as an Internet Explorer browser add-on. Funny thing, these files (which I have deleted by the way, just to be on the safe side), though names .exe had icons that appeared to be Internet Explorer PAGES, not apps. Anyone else run into something like this? I've still got a few files in this folder which will not allow me to delete them....but the major problem of the CPU usage jumping around seems to be resolved.
Oh, and it was definately NOT normal jumping around......and another funny thing it was doing.....I would move my 'start' bar to the side of the window (left side, if you'd like to know) and lock it. Suddenly, over and over, the bar would move back to the bottom of the screen. I think this was related to the other problem, and I'm really not sure, but it hasn't done it since I deleted those files. The other files in the folder claim that they are protected or in use by another program and will not let me delete them. I don't even know if this file is supposed to be there, so I'm not sure if I should continue trying. Any ideas?
Oh btw, bf is much happier now that the desktop is running the way it's supposed to.

__________________________________________
Bless & blessed be,

Razorblade kisses always,
Dementia Armand

"For I am death....
.....and I never die."

www.deaddolls.us
www.dementedmind.net

email- dementia@dementedmind.net

I would be downloading and running Ad-Aware and Spybots Search & Destroy, two of the best malware/spyware scanning programs out there. Just do the web update to get current reference first.