X (xorg 7.3) consumes all the CPU

[Paul Schmehl]

Is there a way to start a process so that memory and CPU usage can be 
tracked closely enough to determine what the cause of 100% CPU use would 
be?  I've got a box, recently installed 6.2 RELEASE with xorg 7.3 
installed, and when X is started, CPU goes to 100% and stays there.

Here's the bad machine
 1510 pauls         1   0    0   277M  7076K rdnrel 0  13:41 100.05% Xorg

Here's my desktop
  868 root          1  96    0   202M   134M select 119:09  0.00% Xorg

As you can see, memory and CPU use is sky high on the "bad" box.  Rather 
than blow it away and reinstall, I'd like to try to figure out what's 
wrong and fix it.  What utilities could I use to do that?

Paul Schmehl (pauls at utdallas.edu)
Senior Information Security Analyst
The University of Texas at Dallas
http://www.utdallas.edu/ir/security/