Activity Monitor

[Graygirl]

My 9 mos old MBPro often gets real slow and jerky. I go to the activity monitor when this happens and the CPU usage window looks like nearly solid green building blocks. I assume this means something is taking up a lot of CPU room. Can anyone explain what I'm seeing? If you can tell me how to post a screenshot I could show you what it looks like. Is there someplace I can learn how to use the activity monitor utility explained in simple terms? I just don't know what to look for or what I'm seeing.
Be gentle....I'm an old gray grandma.

 

[ccashman92]

My 9 mos old MBPro often gets real slow and jerky. I go to the activity monitor when this happens and the CPU usage window looks like nearly solid green building blocks. I assume this means something is taking up a lot of CPU room. Can anyone explain what I'm seeing? If you can tell me how to post a screenshot I could show you what it looks like. Is there someplace I can learn how to use the activity monitor utility explained in simple terms? I just don't know what to look for or what I'm seeing.
Be gentle....I'm an old gray grandma.

Take snapshots please!

 

[LPZ]

My 9 mos old MBPro often gets real slow and jerky. I go to the activity monitor when this happens and the CPU usage window looks like nearly solid green building blocks. I assume this means something is taking up a lot of CPU room. Can anyone explain what I'm seeing? If you can tell me how to post a screenshot I could show you what it looks like. Is there someplace I can learn how to use the activity monitor utility explained in simple terms? I just don't know what to look for or what I'm seeing.
Be gentle....I'm an old gray grandma.

Open Activity Monitor in your Utilities folder. In the application's Window menu, choose Activity Monitor (or simply press command-1). You should see a table of active processes, and one of the columns should show %CPU. To be sure the table includes all processes, choose "All Processes" instead of "My Processes" from the list adjacent to the filter/search box. Simply note the name of any process that has a very high number in that %CPU column. Once you've identified the culprit, post the process name and maybe someone can identify what it is.