When you are in task manager, right click on the "processes" tab then 
right click on the word "CPU" to have the running processes in order of 
amount of CPU usage. If you right click again on "CPU", the processes 
list will be reversed by CPU usage. The 0% total usage is an indication 
that you do not have a program using excessive/any  CPU resources. BTW 
The System Idle Process is good being a high number since it indicates 
the CPU not being used.

The order in which the data cables are connected to the motherboard can 
affect the speed. There are differing opinions on the order of the data 
cable connections. I have mine set with the C hard drive set as the 
primary master, the DVD-RW drive set as primary slave, the D hard drive 
set as secondary master and the CD-RW drive set as secondary slave. 
Since a lot of my data transfers are between the two hard drives and 
also between the CD drive and C hard drive, by having them separated 
between the primary and secondary channels there is less delay between 
the read and write cycles. This is for IDE drives and likely does not 
apply to the newer SATA drives.

You might also want to check the BIOS information for your CD and DVD 
drives against the preferred settings in their manuals. This information 
should automatically be set by the BIOS, but could be wrong.

I hope this helps.

Tom

Ray Parrish wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I don't see a place to click on CPU on the Processes tab of Task 
> Manager... It does have a readout of the current CPU usage at the 
> bottom of the dialog, but it falls off to zero as soon as I quit doing 
> anything like moving the task manager window around. Are you in 
> Windows XP? That's what I'm using, SP3 Home edition.
>
> Later, Ray Parrish
>
> Thomas Mayer wrote:
>> You can find that by using the Windows Task Manager 
>> (control-alternate-delete) and looking at the Processes tab. By 
>> clicking on CPU you can list the processes by the amount of CPU usage 
>> and see if anything does not seem appropriate.

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