So I had just finished installing Google Earth on my laptop and was about to explore the brand new street view here in Holland, when, as soon as I open Google Earth, my CPU shoots to 100%. The program did start up but the graphics took ages to load and there was no possibility to navigate at all. After 5 unresponsive minutes I killed the application and restarted it. Same thing, no way to get anything to work.
But, thanks to Google, here’s the deal.. When you go to Tools -> Options, on the right side of your screen you’ll see “Graphics mode” with 2 options and “OpenGL” as the default selected one. Switch to “DirectX”, restart Google Earth and you’re ready to rock!

Hope this works for you!