"Craig Dedo" wrote in
news:1175394771.198696.212430@y66g2000hsf.googlegr oups.com:

> I am having a lot of problems with the cidaemon.exe process
> consuming large amounts of CPU time on my desktop PC. for
> some reason, I do not have this problem on my laptop.
>
> Most of the time, Windows Task Manager reports that
> cidaemon.exe is running somewhere between 50% and 98% of
> the CPU time, even at times that I am not doing anything.
> These runaway cidaemon.exe processes consume so much CPU
> and block the interrupt handling that it often is
> impossible for me to get a response from the PC for as much
> as half a minute or more.
>
> I have up-to-date copies of Norton Internet Security 2007
> and Webroot Spy Sweeper 5.3 installed on both machines.
>
> Here are some known configuration differences.
>
> Desktop PC:
> Windows XP Professional SP2
> All Microsoft fixes installed and up-to-date
> 2 copies of cidaemon.exe, one in \Windows\system32
> directory and the other in \Windows\system32\dllcache
> directory. Both copies timestamped August 23, 2001 07:00
>
> Laptop PC:
> Windows XP Home SP2
> All Microsoft fixes installed and up-to-date
> 1 copy of cidaemon.exe, in \Windows\system32 directory
> Copy timestamped August 04, 2004 03:00
>
> What could be going wrong and how do I fix the problem?

Unless it's a virus of a same name (Google, info among first ten
links) it's a MS Indexing service which is supposed to let you
find things faster but mostly just slows your computers down.
Most tweakers suggest turning it off. See Google for how to do
that.

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Disagreements and the usual insults expected and welcomed.