Word CPU use.

[JMG]

On my laptop I am running windows XP with Office XP (Word 2002) with
reference manager.
Whenever working on a word doc, the fan comes on at high speed, and
CPU utilisation jumps to 60% plus. This is probably not good for the
CPU life, battery life, or me (I get easily irritated by the fan).
Just opening the task manager or any other window does help a bit, and
if minimised, word does not take much processor and everything goes
quiet.

Microsoft knowledgebase talks about low level requests, which sounds
about right, but I have turned off spelling and grammar, which has not
helped. Can anyone suggest a next best action?

Thanks in advance,

Justin

 

[Courtney]

On my laptop I am running windows XP with Office XP (Word 2002) with
reference manager.
Whenever working on a word doc, the fan comes on at high speed, and
CPU utilisation jumps to 60% plus. This is probably not good for the
CPU life, battery life, or me (I get easily irritated by the fan).
Just opening the task manager or any other window does help a bit, and
if minimised, word does not take much processor and everything goes
quiet.

Microsoft knowledgebase talks about low level requests, which sounds
about right, but I have turned off spelling and grammar, which has not
helped. Can anyone suggest a next best action?

Thanks in advance,

Justin

If you are worried about the processor, don't. It is using the exact same
processor power as it would be if you are doing absolutely nothing. If you were
to look at the Task Manager, Process, you would see a process called System Idle
Process. That is a program that Windows runs when it isn't doing anything else.
(The CPU always has to be doing something, even if it's a loop. That's what the
System Idle Process is.)

Your hard drive is a different issue. Word asks for about 768 MB RAM when it
starts. When it does, Windows has to map that request somewhere. It maps some to
RAM and some to the swap file. (Now you know why it's always a good idea to have
a swap file. Without it, Windows has to map all of it to RAM.)

The constant use of that swap file will keep your laptop hard drive running,
heat up the laptop, and get its fan going. It also uses battery power (for both
the fan and the hard drive).

The best way to reduce the Word hard drive overload is to get more RAM.

courtney sends....

 

[JMG]

It does not seem to be the HDD but the CPU which triggers the noisey
fan. It is clear that it is fine if minimised, but as soon as
maximised, the fan comes on high speed. Does anyone know what word
does in the foreground even when the document is not being worked on?
(And more to the point can I turn it down!)

Justin