For some time now, something has been bogging down your CPU. The whole computer has become slow and the system reports permanently high CPU usage. What is happening?

A possible cause for the high CPU usage is dificulty in accessing the hard disk. After six transfer errors, the IDE/ ATAPI drivers gradually reduce the speed to the slowest, oldest PIO mode. This could be caused by bad sectors on the magnetic disk surface.
For the hard drive to work in the faster DMA mode again, you must temporarily uninstall the relevant controller.

After restarting the system, Windows identifies it as new hardware, reinstalls the necessary drivers and makes the standard settings for the connected devices. Press the key-combination [Windows] + [Pause/Break] to bring up the System Properties dialog box, activate the ‘ Hardware ’ tab and there, click on
‘ Device Manager ’. Extend the node ‘ IDE ATA/ATAPI-Controller ’. Double-click on the relevant controller or the desired IDE-channel. In the ‘ Advanced settings ’ tab, check which transfer mode is active for the IDE channel at the moment. Then switch to the ‘ Driver ’ tab and click on ‘ Uninstall ’. Click ‘ OK ’ to confirm this.

Finally, restart the PC. Note: The cause could also be that the IDE cable to which the hard disk is connected is defective. The jumper setting of the hard disk could also cause trouble. See whether you can solve the problem by setting the jumpers to ‘ Master ’ or ‘Slave’ (depending on your configuration) instead of ‘ Cable Select ’.