Ridiculous Overall System Lag All Of A Sudden!

[Vanchatron]

I'll start off with my PC specs:

OS - Windows XP Media Centre Edition (SP3)
CPU - Intel Pentium D 820 2.8Ghz
Video Card - Nvidia Geforce 8800GTS 640mb
Ram - 2gb DDR 2
PSU - Thermaltake Toughpower 750w
Resolution - 1440x900

OK, not the best specs, but decent enough I'd assume to run all of the following programs without any Lag. The past week I've been experiencing ridiculous lag both in games I play on the PC & just from switching to & from different programs. As you can see in the screenshot, the CPU Usage is at 100% which is going on most of the time. This is WITHOUT my Firewall & Anti-Virus software running (Zone Alarm + AVG). I turned it off for a split second just to see if performance would increase, but it made no difference whatsoever. I thought it may be a virus, but nothing's showing up in the processes as looking like a virus, and all my virus scans are coming up clean.

I also performed a full HDD Defrag around a week ago & I do regular cleanups of the PC, using CCleaner.

What could be the problem?

Screenshot - http://img27.picoodle.com/img/img27/3/10/1/f_untitledm_c4bceba.jpg

Thanks.

[mjc]

Kill Winamp, wow and Firefox...

Do things settled down?

Do you have any Firefox extensions...especially ones that control Winamp?

[Vanchatron]

Kill Winamp, wow and Firefox...

Do things settled down?

Do you have any Firefox extensions...especially ones that control Winamp?

No, none in Firefox. I closed these programs and now it's at around 1%.

Seems like I can't have as many programs open as I thought I could.

Would upgrading my CPU to a Core2Duo or a Quad Core sort this problem out?

Thanks.

[mjc]

With FireFox open how does the system behave?

[Vanchatron]

With FireFox open how does the system behave?

Fine. The CPU reading with Firefox open is 00, which seems odd considering it was so high before :confused:

Also, everything's fine, no lag at all. Surely Winamp + WoW (World of Warcraft) can't be taking up ALL my resources.

[mjc]

Try the remaining two by themselves...Winamp, then WoW.

Keep an eye on things. If they are good by themselves then pair them up...FF/Winamp, FF/WoW...then Winamp/WoW

[Sylvander]

Important: Some malware camouflage themselves as WoW.exe, particularly if they are located in c:\windows or c:\windows\system32 folder. Thus check the WoW.exe process on your pc whether it is a pest. (http://www.file.net/process/wow.exe.html)