Long time user/lurker here... This problem was killing me as well... and I found it to be utterly simple, but very difficult to find... Media Center Stuff was turned on in the config (not sure when it got enabled), so it was looking for Media Center to be running constantly this was pegging the processor to 100% on 1 core of 2... after disabling these settings it was reduced to 2-5% at idle. tom, it would be nice to check the existance of the MCE itself and disable those options incase some one accidentally triggers this on their non MCE system.