Busy CPU Meters
The same situation has affected two laptops, an Acer notebook and a Dell Inspiron, both running windows 7 and usually using IE.
For weeks, the cpu meters would periodically show activity when no programs (applications) were open, and if unchecked would considerably fill the capacity of the CPU memory. Most often this was solved with a reboot.
Then the situation became more persistent and reboots did not help, nor did a series of three system restores, kicking it back to May. The smaller Acer was more severely affected because the memory filled quickly and it slowed to the point of being almost frozen.
Malware bytes run on both computers found NO problems. Updated and run again and still nothing.
Yesterday the Acer was reset to factory settings and the problem persisted.
Has anyone encountered this and located the process or service responsible?