Thanks. I am relieved that this is normal with windows 7. My music server had only been installed in my system for a couple of weeks and I hadn't gotten around to purchasing a ups, when I came home from work the other day I was greeted to flashing clocks and cooked internet router power supply. The sales woman that sold me a new power supply said the power had been flickering all morning. I hadn't been sure if I missed a setting or had changed something in my fumbling through windows, but have really been worried that either the v-link or server had been damaged.
I built my server with an Intel Pentium G620T, so it isn't a real powerhouse. Seeing that one core on your i3 would spike to 70% it occurred to me that I could plug the v-link into my main computer to see what type of cpu usage I would have. The spikes never broke 25% on a single core but were not sustained. I installed the v-link back into my system and out of curiosity installed service pack 1 and every available update (I am unsure if this is good or bad). I again checked my usage in performance monitor. I still saw one core with 100% usage spike but it was not sustained and timed them to almost 2 minute intervals.
Anyway I appreciate that you took some time out of your day to help me.
Thank-you.