The WhySoSlow "AntiFreeze" tool showed that dropbox.exe was, over a period of time, using a huge amount of CPU time - orders of magnitude great than the next most CPU-intensive task.
A bit of Googling revealed that this is a known issue that happens sometimes. Uninstalling dropbox.exe seems to have cured the problem - CPU load chugs along in single figures most of the time, with peaks to, say, 80% when launching a browser etc. (and then it settles down again). The unexplained jumps and staying at 100% for minutes at a time seem to be a thing of the past (I hope I'm not tempting fate by saying this!).
Chrome still seems to use an excessive amount of RAM and CPU - again, notorious for this, I think. I'm using Opera for Windows most of the time and this works well. It's a pity that there isn't a Grammarly plug in for browsers other than Chrome, as I find this very useful for detecting and correcting typos on the fly (rather than the squiggly line underneath which requires going back, right clicking etc to find the correct word. I might see if I can make Chrome less CPU-hungry.
Google reveals that there are some fixes or workarounds for the dropbox.exe problem - when I have time I'll go back and see if I can fix it. In the meantime, I don't have a need for it to be installed.
This problem of CPU 100% loading has been happening for more than 6 months, and has been driving me a bit crazy. I have tried so many things to diagnose the issue but no other tool (Sysinternals or the others earlier in this thread) have worked.
THANK YOU to whoever created WhySoSlow, and thank you again, F22 Simpilot (whoever and wherever you are!) for all your help with this. Very much appreciated.
I had a felling Dropbox was the issue. Wasn't too sure though.
If you want to use the cloud, I highly recommend Amazon S3. Then you can use the Cloudberry program and schedule backups. You can even use WinSCP (A FTP client) to navigate the Amazon S3 bucket. I's use the program Keepass to store your password and access key.
As to Grammarly, their web page has a Firefox version. Grammarly: Free Writing Assistant And since I use Pale Moon as my browser which uses the older XUL code for add-ons, I checked the Classic add-ons archive for Grammarly and it exists. Only thing I don't care about it is that is uploads your text to a server so it's not something I want. In Pale Moon I use an add-on called Lazurus to save text I type in case of browser of computer crashes. And It's all ready saved me on a number of times. Tried to make a donation but the link wasn't working.
Anyway, you can thank the developers at this website. Resplendence Software - WhySoSlow Do check out their Sanity Check program. Pretty neat and it does keep my malware paranoia in check HAHA, albeit I also run Herdprotect portable, Super Antispyware, ADSkiller, Freefixer, Streamarmor, and Ring3 Hook scanner. Nothing ever found and I don't run an anti-virus. Really don't need it. Especially on my gaming computer.
Edit-
Opera is owned by a Chinese company and if you a leery of China, you may want to go Firefox or Pale Moon.
Although, I do use AOMEI Backupper which is Chinese owned, but I haven't seen any funny business with it. I should check it out while a network sniffer is running. In fact, I'll do that now. HAHAH
Loveland, Colorado where one day it was 27 degrees Celsius and the next day a blizzard of snow and a low of -7.2 degrees Celsius. Today is supposed to be 7 degrees Celsius.
In February we had temps of -21 degrees Celsius. Nothing like North Dakota where it's at least -35 degrees Celsius. I used to live there as a kid in the 80's. Moved out in '88 to sunny Riverside, California which to me looks like Perth looking at Google Street View. Though the ocean is about 30 miles or so to the west.
Now I wouldn't mind living in Texas or Florida. The cold suxx and this state has issues...
