What's locking up my Laptop?

October 26, 2012 5:22 PM

How do I find out which application on my old laptop is eating up all the CPU when I connect to a WiFi hotspot? I've tried turning on Performance monitoring but of course it freezes up with everything else.

When I connect to the Net at any Wifi hotspot, some application starts accessing or downloading to the hard drive. After about ten minutes, the drive light is on solid and the laptop stops responding.

I fix it by powering off the machine. When it comes back up, I can connect with no further problems.

This sounds like there's an application that is downloading an update or data or ? once a day.

What's the fastest way of finding the miscreant?

I'm running Windows Vista (Home version), Chrome, AVG (Free), ZoneAlarm, the Dell Support app is also running as is something called Synaptics Pointing Device.

posted by storybored to computers & internet (2 answers total)

Sysinternals' "Process Explorer".

Open it before you connect, set the priority to realtime (if necessary), then see who crushes your CPU when you connect.
posted by pla at 6:51 PM on October 26, 2012 [1 favorite]

If it's an old and intermittently used laptop, Windows Update and/or AV programs may be trying to download and install updates whenever they get a network connection. Try connecting the laptop to your home network and leaving it undisturbed for a few hours. Otherwise, turn Windows Update and other updaters off while you're out and about connecting to wifi hotspots.
Belarc Advisor is a free program that can perform an audit of your PC and tell you, among other things, which updates are missing.
posted by islander at 7:58 PM on October 26, 2012 [1 favorite]