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Isn’t it frustrating when your computer slows down to a snail pace? Well, it was killing me until… I found the answer. Here’s how.

I’d tried all the usual things:

* Too many websites open in too many tabs (close most of them)

* Too many programs running (exit from some of them via the icon tray)

* Virus or spyware (probably not, because I run various applications to protect from those risks).

Then this morning, I did something I should have done a lot earlier. I did an internet search for “100% CPU usage”. I’d searched earlier for “slow computer” but there were so many results it was overkill. The proverbial needle was buried in a haystack of over-information.

If you’re wondering why I searched for 100% CUP usage, let me explain. There is a Windows Task Manager on my PC – and probably on yours. You can open it by clicking the Ctrl, Alt and Del keys all at once. Then go to the Processes tab, and click the CPU column header (CPU = central processing unit, the brains of your computer). Maybe click twice to get the big percentages at the top of the column.

When my computer was as slow as molasses in winter, firefox.exe was always up near the top of the CPU uage column. It was chewing up most of my processing power, most of the time. And that is the symptom which I (finally!!) fed into Google.

Well, that search produced a ton of results but again it was too broad. So I added the word firefox into the search. “100% cpu usage firefox.exe”

Bingo.

It led me to http://support.mozilla.com/en-US/kb/CPU+usage by the folks who produce Firefox. That page contains several solutions, the last one being to stop Firefox doing its prefetch. The instructions were simple. Doing it was equally simple.

And the brilliant thing is… this worked.

In the search process, I also found two other sites I can recommend if you have technical questions about your computer problems.

http://www.techsupportforum.com – Free computer support for everyone.

http://ask-leo.com – Tech Questions? Find Answers.

There you have it. My slow computer has been fixed by the very simple strategem of deleting the Windows prefetch files which Firefox was using. After deleting them, Firefox works fine. A lot faster of course, and my whole machine is once again spinning along happily. And so am I.

I hope this long winded explanation helps you.
Gary

PS: While writing this, firefox.exe was using between 8% and 19% of CPU capacity. Nice.

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