>You'll probably find that the CPU time is being taken up by items in your >System Tray. Laptop's are particularly good at loading pointless utilities >into the System Tray.

Actually, that was the first thing that I tried. I closed all the items in the sys tray. I also used MSCONFIG to turn off all the other programs from loading at start up. From a utility call Nuts and Bolts '98(by MaAfee), I don't see any unusual apps running in the background. That's why I am so puzzled.