Strange processor activity on a Toshiba laptop with intel core 2 processors?

Question

After I got my laptop back from the factory when it had the hard drive go bad, the processors were behaving differently than they did before. With only the default programs on it, the CPU usage never seems to drop below 50% even when nothing is running. It is usually one processor running at it's full capacity while the other is nearly idle. This is mostly a problem when I try to play video or audio. Though it downloads quickly, the video plays slowly and the sound is distorted. Even when starting up, the startup tone is distorted in the same way. Does anyone know what may be happening or how I can fix it?

Answer 1

First suspect on the descriptions are the DMA , either the chipset drivers not loaded/installed or the drives is running on PIO mode, hence the slow speed, but because you have a fast CPU, it kind of compensated the sloe hard drive speed but the startup sound and heavy CPU usage shows the tell tell signs.

Answer 2

Unfortunately we need to know what processes are causing the high CPU usage. Generally speaking, this is not normal.

I suggest looking at Task Manager to see which one is eating up the power, or installing the Microsoft Sysinternals Process Explorer program to get a more detailed view than Task Manager.