HelpPane.exe taking up lots of cpu
 

My specs:
Toshiba Satellite L645D-S4037 laptop, AMD Phenom II Triple-Core P820(1.8GHz), 4GB Memory, 500GB HDD 5400rpm, ATI Radeon HD 4250, Windows 7 home premium 64 bit.

When I open up task manager and check the processes that are running, there is a program called HelpPane.exe- it is taking up about 34% of the cpu, and about 9 MB of ram. The description says “Microsoft help and support”. My cpu temperature is at 55%, according to the Toshiba pc health monitor. I looked online and it said it wasn’t spyware, but any miscellaneous program that I’ve encountered that takes up that much cpu is spyware.

What exactly is helppane.exe? And why is it taking up so much cpu? Is there any way to remove it? Will that cause any problems?

Thanks.

Post screenshots of Services and Startup tabs in "System Configuration" (type in Start Menu), and running processes in Task Manager.

MEGAUPLOAD - The leading online storage and file delivery service

There's lots of pics, so I put it in a rar file.

Can you click "Show processes from all users" on Task Manager so we can see those that belong to SYSTEM?

While we don't have the same computer or operating system (I'm on Windows 7 Pro), there must be something that's activating Helppane.exe. I don't have it on my task list , for instance.

I saw elsewhere on the internet someone said it was a stuck key on their keyboard; maybe one of the media keys on your laptop is registering as pressed down? It's a long shot, but a lot of times the fixes to these seemingly random problems are.

Actually, I just got HelpPane.exe to open up on my computer by just hitting F1 on the desktop. If I mash F1 a ton of times it doesn't pop up any more instances, either. I imagine it's gotta be somehow launching but getting hidden in the background right when you start.