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I occasionally get a message form Norton saying that there has been, or is, high CPU usage.

What causes it, and should I do anything about it ?

They say that it from a trusted source and does not present a threat.
If that is the case, why do they notify me ?

I'm puzzled.

Hi Aggers.

Applications and services use up CPU power. When they open or are doing heavy work you might notice a spike in CPU usage. If it is happening quite a lot you need to know what is causing it, and why.

When the warning appears open up Task Manager with the Ctrl+Alt+Del key combination. In the new window open the Processes tab. Look for the CPU column and click on it, this will order the listings in terms of CPU usage - if it sorts low to high click again to get high users to the top.

Most things should should only use a few % of power, if that, but sometimes things go wrong and an app might get stuck in a loop sending its usage up to 100%. When that happens the way out is to kill the process/app. To do that using Task Manager you right click on its entry in the list and from the menu choose Kill Process. However, there are some things, such as e-mail, defrag or AV scanners, that can take up lots of CPU cycles. They might cause Norton to give the warning, but they should be left alone to do their work.

Thanks, Frank. I think I now understand.

Norton have said on each occasion that there is no risk, but should they say there is a problem,
I now know what to do. Thanks, pal.

Aggers wrote:Norton have said on each occasion that there is no risk, but should they say there is a problem?

Not necessarily, it could simply be that Norton is doing its job.

John, I do not use Norton, but I do know that it is pretty comprehensive. Is there something in Settings/Options to turn off alerts or increase the threshold of when they kick in? Alternatively, is there a link in the pop-up indicating what is causing the problem? Can you tell Norton to ignore it?