PRIYA

AMD Turion TL-52 1.6Ghz, 2 x 512Kb L2 cahce, 2GB RAM

When it was new it worked flawlessly, I could watch full-screen movies and never had any "max-outs" or choppy behavior. About a year ago (or so) full-screen videos get choppy. They will play fine for a minute or two, then my multimeter shows both cores maxing out 98-100% periodically, which simultaneously causes the video (and even my music thru media player) to become choppy.

I have SpySweeper, and it shows no spyware/adware, the Ram is usually fine (around 48-60%) even while the processors max out. It only seems to do it when running video (whether Media Player or other players) and music. The processors will hold steady at 12-20%, then just jump to maxed out for 10 seconds or so, then they relax.

I close out the sidebar, all those "extras" and I have even lowered my graphics card settings, to no avail- I think I've tried it all.

Why would it have run fine for a couple years, and now it acts up- but only intermittently like that? What do I do?