What do you mean by "all other programs" ? It's quite possible there's some kind of background process running that you haven't closed (such as an antivirus) that is preventing the CPU usage from going to zero.

At any rate, I don't think there's more than one API for getting the CPU load, so while there are many different programs that could potentially read the CPU load, they'll all probably be equally "totally inaccurate". (My favorite was always TClockEx, which hooks into the system tray clock.)

yeah man maybe you are right, but a constant ~80% cpu load with no user tasks running sounds really unreasonable and useless, cpu is a k62+500.

Mysterious CPU load was hardly uncommon back in the day. It's not even necessarily something to worry much about, as it doesn't always mean other programs will start running more slowly. (Doesn't moving the mouse around vigorously generate CPU load?)

You should take a look at Autoruns from http://www.filehippo.com/download_autoruns/3847/ and see if you can determine what is loading at startup that might be causing the problem.

Jorpho wrote:

(Doesn't moving the mouse around vigorously generate CPU load?)

Yeah, I remember a friend of mine had this old 286 computer with DOS and it would lock up if he typed too fast.

😜

Try either AnVir Task Manager Free or Free Meter