Laptop not cooperative today - update below - it's alive!

Well, my not-even-1-year-old laptop has decided to either go on strike or it's sick. We haven't figured it out yet.

The CPU is running at 100% even with as many background programs shut down as is possible. I defragged, cleaned, scanned for both viruses and spyware, and did everything short of standing on my head - something I have never been able to do (nor could I ever do a cartwheel, but I digress).

However, not all is lost - I have my files backed up through Carbonite and have switched to my desktop. Unfortunately, this desktop has issues of its own! I will have to see if I can bring the laptop to some magic computer guru, or the Geek Squad if we have one here in Montreal. I think we do.

Anyway, later today or tomorrow, I'll resume my regular blog stuff. Because I spent most of the day yesterday trying to coax my laptop into behaving, I got very little real work done. So, here's to hoping to a very productive work day.

Sigh.

ok, it's 8:12 a.m. and I have been at it for a while now. I'm very pleased to announce that my stubborn streak has won and my computer is now all better. :-)
For those of you who may ever encounter the same problem, and I have read it isn't uncommon, this is what happened and what I did.

As I said, yesterday the laptop started running at 100% even though I'd shut down all possible programs. Without any obvious one running and as many background ones running, I still couldn't find out the problem. I did alt+ctr+delete again and checked the background programs and finally found one called spoolsv.exe that was running at *99*. There was the problem.
I did a search on the Web and found that others who had the same problem had a microsoft printer on their computer and that there were stuck spooled printing jobs on them. Sure enough, I checked my printers and found two huge printing jobs stuck there. This was odd because I've never used that printer and I didn't send anything knowingly to that printer. Anyway, I deleted it and now my computer is acting fine.

Whew. Now, to make up for all that lost time.