I'm Running XP on a Toshiba Qosmio G20-139 laptop. System was stable. Installed a HP C4480 3-in-1 PRINTER using original HP Installation disc for XP. The Install seemed to RUN OK with no error messages. After the required Reboot I noticed the computer was running unbelievably slow. Looking at Task Manager I saw the CPU at 100% useage and 85 (yes 85) running processes. A test on a similar Toshiba/XP laptop (without HP) showed a CPU usage of 5 to 20% and about 20 running processes. What on earth has happened? Although not technically crashed, the Toshiba is running so slow I doubt if I will be able to move any files to a safe harbour, such a USB Memory Stick. Can anybody suggest a way forward? I couldn't locate a HP un-install so I deleted the contents of the HP folder --but that didn't reduce the running processes one bit. What created and started up 85 processes?In task manager I'd identify what the process names are that are using up the CPU resources and list them here if you are unsure as to what they are. You should be able to kill the processes 1 by 1 for the ones that are unnecessary and eventually get your system back to a state where its not crippled.

Once you identify which process it is that is using the most resources of them all you can SET that service to manual vs automatic and this way the system doesnt run crippled, and then eventually remove the troubled service.

I'd suggest using the latest drivers available from HP instead of the original disk as for there may be a bug fix that prevents this issue from happening etc. Quote

I couldn't locate a HP un-install so I deleted the contents of the HP folder --but that didn't reduce the running processes one bit.