100 cpu every few minutes on PSQL - weak machine

[bears]

Hello,

I'm using XP and postgres ver 8.4 along with PT build 5.

I have 2 GB ram and a separate hdd for the data files. But my CPU is just an AMD 64 2800+ Which is roughly equal to a lower end Pentium 4.

I'm running 6-8 tables at FTP and every ten or twenty of minutes the CPU gets utilized 100% for about 15 to 20 seconds. The process using the CPU is a postgres one.

It causes me to time out. I tried setting the priority of the postgres to low, but it will not let me change it. Funny thing is that with 8.3 on vista I always changed the priority to high and was allowed to do so. So, then I changed the priority of FTP to high and then to real time, but once the postgres process decided it wanted the CPU FTP was still left frozen.

When I was using PT2 and postgresql 8.3 on a better VISTA machine the postgres processes hardly used any CPU and never seemed to use the CPU in spurts like it is doing now.

Any ideas ?
Thank you.

EDIT...Originally I said something like every couple of minutes, but it is much further apart than that.

[kraada]

PTv2 and PT3 use significantly different amounts of resources, if for no other reason than that PT3 holds a lot more data in its database.

That said, PostgreSQL 8.4 has not been fully tested to make certain that there are no problems with it and PT3, so it is possible there is a conflict.

Before asking you to change installations though, would you please try defragging your hard drive, running a full Housekeeping on your database and performing the PostgreSQL Performance Tuning? All of those can improve performance.