That's pretty high for media players. The Core Duo isn't super old but your system should support at least 4GB of RAM I would imagine. 2GB seems so little. Since it accepted 3GB, then that means it's supported. Ignore Crucial. It lied. Do you have any scheduled program tasks? Something in the background may be running every now and then such as antivirus. When it spikes, check the Windows Task Manager (Ctr + Alt + Del and then select Start Task Manager, or right-click on the small arrow pointing up near the clock and select Start Task Manager from there), then click the Processes tab and sort by CPU so the tasks using the CPU the most are at the top. See if you can pinpoint the source of the issue there and confirm if it is VLC or WMP, or something else.
Whew, good to know crucial lies. I'm really hoping its not a ram problem cause that's gonna be costly to fix. It seems to only happen when I have one of the browsers I have installed (opera, firefox, ie) running, they're not on anything but usually on google news . CPU usage for them would be around 20%, then turning that off, the CPU usage goes to VLC or something else for a minute or so until the CPU finally calms down and everything starts working again.
when it comes to the RAM stats. All it means by "Only 2x1GB sticks" is that only that was tested. Anything beyond that is unknown to the manufacture. As for the issue, try disabling the Windows media Network Sharing Service and see what happens. Also change the power plans to "High Performance" if you did not do so already. I have seen other similar reports on those options fixing the issue. The only thing I can think of is either an AV running as mentioned above, some other program running, a bad driver, or something directly to your video card. It is really hard to say what exactly is going on but I would bet that changing those options will help.
If you were me, you'd already done a fresh install to see if it still happens afterwards. Sometimes a fresh install helps a lot.
Thanks, I think I might have to consider a fresh install Windows media Network Sharing Service is already on stopped (manual start) and there's no battery in the laptop just AC. Pretty frustrating problem.
There might be a problem with codecs installed on your system OR the codecs being misconfigured. Use Gspot to scan for codecs & see whether there are any invalid entries or not also set your codecs to their default settings. You should also install Klite Mega Codec Pack & generate a detailed info on your system/installed codecs then run Codec Tweak Tool to repair them(if necessary).
If using VLC you don't need to add codecs they are integrated. Also user seems to be running a lot of processes in the background.
um, just a thought- Do you have a Trojan?? I noticed that the box at the bottom "show processes from all users" is unchecked. If you add all your processes up its 71%, but your actual usage is 100%. Just a thought.