Windows XP forum: CPU use following defrag and virtual memory move

I won't duplicate articles about placing the swapfile far away from ready access as you have done. The additional seek to the other partition will likely add some time but this is your choice on that matter.

There is however the issues of:

1. Indexing Service.
2. XP's DMA 'bug'.

For item 1 I have yet to see it pay off so I disable the indexing the moment I get a new machine. Your choice on that matter if you feel its needed or not.

For item 2, the workaround is simple. Set the DMA on all channels to PIO, OK your way out then go back in and set it to DMA. The bug in this is that XP may display it as in DMA mode but underneath be in PIO (slow) mode. Again, the procedure is simple, but is your choice to flip it to PIO and back to DMA. Here's the article on where this setting is -> http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/device/storage/IDE-DMA.mspx

Cheers,

Bob

"In my case, it was the norton antivirus autoprotect function that was using too many cycles. Took me a while to figure out why, but it was because of the XP indexing service (makes file searching faster). Every time the indexing service looked at a file, NAV was watching. I
turned off the indexing and the problem went away. "
-> A newsgroup article.

Sometimes it a combo to trigger this effect.

Bob