Hi Jeff,

Did you read thru the forum that followed the article? He 'fesses up on page three.
ref: http://discuss.pcmag.com/forums/3/292401001/ShowThread.aspx

Apropos of nothing, do you think it's possible for a process to use very little cpu cycles, yet perform an awful lot of I/O?

A really odd comment from Dvorak that. But then I guess he is known for them.

To twist his words into a valid point though, why we spend money on such powerful processors just to have them sit idle for 99.9999% of their life.

Couldn't the CPU/OS find something to amuse itself with while I'm surfing the web?
(Cue: Grid computing)

Or couldn't the CPU throttle itself back so that the current workload keeps it busy enough, but maintains responsiveness?
(Cue: AMD Cool 'n' Quiet)

You got it wrong, when the OS is idle, it gets the monitor with its z80 to run the networking, refresh the screen, and poll the keyboard, and so on . . . lol

Come on dude smell the silicon

Not the brightest bulb in the shed, this Dvorak. He's become famous with his controversial opinions about Everything and even boasts about it. His ability to blog and the air-time that Leo's given him only made matters worse.

Doesn't take a rocket scientist to infer what "idle process" does, does it?

In defense of Dvorak,

I would not call myself inexperienced in computer affairs, but this thing has fooled me too. At the time, I googled to see if the 'System Idle Process' might be *spyware*. When I look at the processes list, I expect it to report on the amount of resources each process takes up. I would expect to get the amount of idle time by doing a sum of all the processes' resources. You don't expect an 'idle' process reporting it 'takes up' all your spare resources! The way it works in windows is completely valid, and there's logic to it, but you have to get your head around it.

I agree that the 'system idle process', in theory, is supposed to be run with the lowest possible priority, I also believe that Microsoft's Operating Systems, at times, has gotten it wrong. I, too, have experienced the condition where I've been working exclusively in one program (writing a long document in Word or something like that) when my CPU fan cranks up and the cursor blink rate goes way down. Keystrokes start lagging behind in the display. I wonder, "What's going on?" only to find that the system idle process has just brought the PC to a crawl.

Eventually, launching the browser or starting some other program eventually tames the idle process - but it seems odd that the computer would be totally unresponsive for an 'idle' process, doesn't it?

I love Dvorak. He's like some grumpy old man that's full of opinions based on assumptions and very little fact. One of my favorite things to do is save his most insane PC Mag articles, like the one about how there will never be $500 comptuers or the one about how broadband will never take off, and then re-read them a year later just to see how horribly wrong he is.

My new favorite is: Apple will switch to Windows.

"To twist his words into a valid point though, why we spend money on such powerful processors just to have them sit idle for 99.9999% of their life.
Couldn't the CPU/OS find something to amuse itself with while I'm surfing the web?
(Cue: Grid computing)
Or couldn't the CPU throttle itself back so that the current workload keeps it busy enough, but maintains responsiveness?
(Cue: AMD Cool 'n' Quiet)"
The problem with running the CPU at 100% constantly is heat, there are plent of things (Like Folding@Home) that use Idle CPU time to compute various stuff. A lot of laptops throttle the speed back when running on battery power to reduce power-consumption - I'm not sure if desktop's do this (Or when the CPU would be throttled back - I'd think if it had to speed the CPU up every time it was used, and throttle it when ever it's idle would slow the processor down. As for why people buy such powerful processors and have them idle for most of the time - You don't buy a fire alarm to use constantly, you buy it only for when (or hopeful "if") you need it. Having a CPU than can run a game at decent speeds, if only for an hour at at time, is useful. Being able to occasionally render a video quickly without having to wait a week is useful too.. Having a fast processor is.. scalable, where as a slow processor that is on the verge of struggling with basic web-browsing is only ever going to be able to browse the web..

Erm, all these complaints stating "Dvorak[..] isn't the brightest bulb in the sheed" and such have failed to notice one very important part :
"fellow columnist Bill Machrone started an interesting e-mail thread recently asking people at the magazine about whether some of the newer XP patches might have screwed up VPN access. This thread evolved into various complaints about XP changing with each new patch"

The system-idle process complaint wasn't made by him, it was someone complaining via email about a WinXP Patch..

Windows Task Manager shows CPU usage as a percentage. That means you should be able to account for 100% of your CPU. The idle task 'holds' CPU resources to account for idle CPU resources.

Don’t blame the CPU every time your machine bogs down. High priority tasks may bog your machine down as they wait on other resources, like I/O or network responses. The lack of a particular resource while performing a given task, and its subsequent drag on your system, is called a bottle neck. CPU is a common bottle neck but also is often the target of a misdiagnosis in an unresponsive system. Meaning it is very possible for your machine to be 'stuck' even with a high percentage of CPU resources in the idle task.

Jeff,

Why do you even respond to that guy? Seriously, what was the last insightful piece he wrote? I can't remember it.

I mean, here's a guy who basically stays famous in geek circles because people mistakenly think that he's the guy who made the keyboard...

Dvorak's good at one thing: generating heaps of traffic via flamebait.

That said, the task manager UI sucks. Idle process should at least be displayed differently, e.g. faded out. It would be better to leave it out, have the real tasks adding up to 100% (or not), and state somewhere else (and visually) how much overall CPU is being used.

Processor Usage:
|xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx----------|
64% used. 36% available.

If I'm not mistaken, the resources displayed for "System Idle Process" also include hardware interrupts, which most definitely can slow down a system.

So yeah, while this Dvorak is obviously an idiot, he may actually be somewhat correct. Of course, the Jeff would also be correct in calling it "some strange, unrelated problem," as this sort of slowdown would be caused by a poorly-configured driver.

Yes-- that is a bizarre comment. Possibly meant tongue-in-cheek, though, or at least that's the only way I could imagine someone would write something like that.
The whole issue reminds of the various kinds of "System Doctor" software from the days of Win95 and the like. One would always get warnings like "Your system is using 90% of its RAM!!". Well, I paid a pretty penny for that RAM as well as the rest of the contraption-- so it better darn well be using it!

I honestly thought this was just a given!

Task Manager also accounts the time to service interrupts and DPCs as belonging to System Idle Process. Thus, it's possible to have a nearly unresponsive system with heavy interrupt and DPC activity yet the CPU usage for the System Idle Process is at 99%.

Obviously Eam is faster than me. :)

dbr:
>Erm, all these complaints stating "Dvorak[..] isn't the brightest bulb in the sheed" and such have failed to notice one very important part :
...
> The system-idle process complaint wasn't made by him, it was someone complaining via email about a WinXP Patch..

You may have failed to notice a very important part yourself. From the article:
"Here are a few of *my* gripes – most of them a result of excessive patching." (Emphasis added)

The complaints calling him stupid are quite clearly correct.

"...a computer journalist of his tenure and stature."

Right. Dvorak is just a journalist who made a niche for himself writing about computers. He's become comfortable enough in his own opinion to wander into areas he only vaguely understands, and periodically it bites him on the ass. Sort of like a music critic who casually plays piano but has never written a song.

I didn't know he had a "tenure and stature" since I don't buy magazines that spend real estate on their past, i.e. "where we were 25 years ago" type crap, kinda like the Lifehacker: "a year ago today" links. Who gives a crap?

disclaimer: I am receiving a free PCMag through some free mail order form I filled out online (those coupon sites feeds are great IMO), so I have seen the name before, and read the column once lol.

That PCMag article is pretty hilarious--it really does sound like he has a virus or considerable amounts of spyware that are contributing to his computer's sluggishness. At the end he asks for people to share, but refuses to hear those who aren't having problems--ie people who maintain their computers well. Sheesh.

When you add the CPU time column to the list of Taskmanager columns, things get more interesting. Looking at any multi-processor (or multi-core machine), the CPU time column will show the Idle process has taken a lot more time than the machine has been running. If Dvorak has a hard time understanding the 95% bit, his brain would probably explode on that one...

Like Cary Millsap put it in his (excellent) Oracle tuning book:

"Any system has an infinite capacity for waiting"

Hello, there really is an issue with the idle process of windows. While you are right that it should be what the wikipedia article tells, it is sometimes behaving quite strangely.
Microsoft does undisclosed things during idle which can sometime really bog down the machine. I had once the case, the laptop of my niece that became slow like molasses in certain games. Looking at the task manager, it was always idle process taking >95% of CPU time. The games were not playable anymore. After long tries I found out what happened. The laptop was freshly installed with XP, nothing special happened. Then, when the PC worked OK my niece started to use its computer for the things she does with it: playing, messaging and surfing. So she connected to the internet via Ethernet and then the thing crawled. I first thought of virus infection, but it was Windows automatic update in the background. The thing works in background within the idle process, and bogs down the machine. Now that the update is complete the idle hog is gone.

Your CPU Usagage is 3% so what does it mean exactly that the System Idle process is using 98%?

I actually enjoy listening to Dvorak at crankygeeks.com and his guest appearances at twit.tv (main podcast). He's sometimes offtrack in his predictions but so what? Many people are that. Just filter out what you think is wrong.

BTW, your captcha always displays 'orange' for me.

Coming from a lot of UNIX (mostly SunOS/Solaris) and Linux experience, I always wondered why Windows NT (and successors 2000, XP, Vista) had an explicit "System Idle Process". I guess it makes sense in that the same system could have a different process for an AMD versus Intel processor, or even vastly different for the other architectures that NT used to support like MIPS and Alpha.

By the way, the init process does more than just sit around and wait for its processes to die. init is generally the first process that the kernel executes after it is finished loading. That is why it gets process id 1. init is responsible for system startup and shutdown. On boot, it mounts all the filesystems (except for the root FS, which is already mounted by the kernel). It then starts up all the system services in the correct order. After that, it manages login processes for user logins. When it gets a shutdown request, it shuts down all the services in the correct order and umounts the filesystems. So like any "service" process, most of the time it just sits there. That doesn't mean it isn't important.

Note that with Linux, you can pass the kernel options through the bootloader. The option "init=/bin/bash" will tell the kernel to run /bin/bash instead of "/sbin/init" (the default). Instead of normal system startup, you will get a command prompt on the console. You'll be able to execute some commands. If you type "exit" or Control-D, you'll get the kernel message "Init processs finished".

>> Couldn't the CPU/OS find something to amuse itself with while I'm surfing the web?

Check out http://www.seti.org or http://boinc.berkeley.edu

At least System Idle doesn't load the CPU, in spite of what the figures say. Try to start Disk Defragmenter (just run it, don't start actual defragmentation or analysis) and leave it idle for a night - it DOES load CPU and heats it like hell.

The things I learn here. I now know not to read Dvorak, except for amusement.

Dumb Question about what Dvorak is trying to describe but apparently not doing a very good job of:

From Eam & Romulo A. Ceccon, I learn the issue of interrupts/DPCs being associated with System Idle. Interesting because...

I experience this sort of slowdown every time time I reboot my box. At startup, I see System Idle near 100%, but I can't get the machine to do ANYTHING.

I'm pretty sure it's because I'm dumb enough to run Norton Internet Security full blown. I'm sure Norton is the culprit, I think it's the Live Updater. I assume this means that it's engaged in activity that, intentionally or not, involves a lot of interrupts/DPCs?

> At startup, I see System Idle near 100%, but I can't get the machine to do ANYTHING

This is probably due to the disk going nuts, loading in all your startup applications. The CPU won't be doing much other than waiting for the disk to complete its work. Vista does a better job of this, deferring more of the startup work so you can begin interacting with the desktop earlier.

Or, you could upgrade to a faster hard drive.. it does make a difference:
http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000800.html

> I'm pretty sure it's because I'm dumb enough to run Norton Internet Security full blown

Yes, you may want to take a look at this, specifically the table of benchmark results in the middle:
http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000803.html

In my country, a so called computer expert said that the Internet would never be popular. This was 1995, and I can understand why someone who have never tried it said so. He thought that the need for human interaction would also stop webshops

The real WTF is that he repeated those statements in 1998 !!! Even Bill Gates had figured out that "the net" was the future...

I agree, AMD cool 'n quiet is a nice solution, features like this are on most laptop CPU's (but I stay away from intel, so it doesn't really matter). however, executing a HLT instruction in a never-ending loop would just HLT once and stop. am I getting something wrong here?

I, like Paul, thought the excerpt must have been tongue-in-cheek, in the same vein as lines like:

"I can't find the any key!"

"Who is General Failure, and what is he doing on my hard disk!?"

Only computer illiterate people jump to conclusions that are purely based on what Task Manager is telling. Everyone else uses perfmon and process explorer. Thankfully in Vista the perfmon is finally usable too.

> I agree, AMD cool 'n quiet is a nice solution, features like this are on most laptop CPU's

AMD Cool 'n' Quiet isn't just for laptops though. I have it activated on my desktop (Athlon 64 3800 X2). I switched it on in the BIOS and then installed the official AMD driver from:
http://www.amd.com/us-en/Processors/TechnicalResources/0,,30_182_871_13118,00.html

They also have a "Dashboard" app which reports the CPU speed and voltage so that you can check it is working properly.

It is really strange; UI hides as much things as it shows! Compare TaskManager with top command of unix; this plain text output gives you more info that you expect; it makes you think like computer scientist; processes, zombies; sleeping; running; io wait etc.
I think this was the reason that Tim Berner Lee never wanted anything to appear on www but text!

"Dvoraksayswhat?"

Dunno why but when I read this I almost fell over laughing.

On a serious note tho, from the Wikipedia entry, "...an idle task is a special task loaded by the OS scheduler only when there is nothing for the computer to do",

The idle task is an actual task that gets "loaded"? I thought that it was just a *representation* of idle, not an actual task. Or, is it that from an OS time accounting perspective there is a do-nothing task that gets loaded so that you have something to measure against?

Indeed, and the working set is quite compact, too!

for those complaining about windows update slowing down their system, there is a fix:
http://www.microsoft.com/communities/newsgroups/en-us/default.aspx?dg=microsoft.public.windowsupdate&tid=507fdfc2-c65b-4d88-bdee-9dc79a8e975f&p=1

performance graph does show hardware interrupts (view -> show kernel times), but the process list does not show them. sysinternal process explorer will list the hardware interrupts on the process list. if you are having heavy usage by hardware interrupts (>1-5%) for extended periods, you likely have a driver issue or hardware issue.

System Idle Process is not a real process, regardless of its name, it's not init. It's just the result of a perfmon query to the kernel for unused time, as opposed to per-process used time.

The process you want to look closely at when the thing goes bonkers is System - that represents the kernel's DPCs, IO, CPU, and other counters (but not memory). Don't ever confuse the two, or you'll never be taken seriously when you need help, because anyone who has familiarity with windows realizes that idle can't do anything. (Specifically aimed at totolamoto, who's describing how System, svchost, and update.exe tagteam to beat up your system, which is totally unrelated to the idle _process_ - it gets out of their way as it should.)

And sometimes it's not the kernel, it's just some other badly written software using up all the GDI handles or something ludicrous like that.

Gabriel, HLT isn't permanent, the processor reawakens at the next interrupt, which comes on a clock tick if no hardware is begging for attention. Oh, wiki has an article, so: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HLT

oh. I am thinking of the older computers, I have never programmed an x86 processor.

Shame on the naysayers. The System Idle Processes really do hog the CPU at unpredictable times. They completely disabled my computer while I was trying to a) allow internet access on Norton Internet Security b) access the Task Manager c) access Google on Internet Explorer, which was already on the screen. None of these applications use the CPU intensively, but the System Idle Processes blocked usage for about 5 minutes.

The name is totally misleading. These processes DO NOT RUN WHILE THE SYSTEM IS IDLE. Often it happens a few minutes after boot up or after returning from Stand By, EXACTLY WHEN THE COMPUTER USER NEEDS THE CPU MOST.

The real bottom line here is this: When I run a program, such as Zero Assumption Recovery (ZAR), and I have nothing else running except my browser (Firefox), I want it to run as quickly as possible. I was ctryingto recover deleted files on a 1 mb card in my daughter's camera.

It took 16 minutes to complete. All the while, I checked Windows Task Manager. "System Idle Process" used 90-98 percent of resources throughout. That, to me, is unacceptable. I want ZAR to use the maximum resources possible. Such a scan could have been completed in 2-3 minutes, easily.

So, what's the deal? How do I change this deplorable situation?

The real bottom line here is this: When I run a program, such as Zero Assumption Recovery (ZAR), and I have nothing else running except my browser (Firefox), I want it to run as quickly as possible. I was ctryingto recover deleted files on a 1 mb card in my daughter's camera.

It took 16 minutes to complete. All the while, I checked Windows Task Manager. "System Idle Process" used 90-98 percent of resources throughout. That, to me, is unacceptable. I want ZAR to use the maximum resources possible. Such a scan could have been completed in 2-3 minutes, easily.

So, what's the deal? How do I change this deplorable situation?

Windows Vista - IBM Thinkpad - Same issue
- System Idle Process peaking
- Causing momentary pauses

RogerK, jbpnet:

You have other issues on your machines, it has nothing to do with the idle process. Try and understand that the idle process does not hog any cpu, consider it the cpu power that is free.

Now, as previously mentioned, there are situations when a faulty hardware or driver could hog the cpu without it showing up as cpu usage, so the tip is to make sure you have all the correct and updated drivers for your computers.

Also, to say that you think program "X" *should* use more cpu to finish more quickly is simply not how it works, it will use what is necessary, it's not like "throwing more cpu on any process makes it faster", we are not talking about gasoline here, it just doesn't work like that.

In conclusion: computers can be slow for a number of reasons but it has nothing to do with the idle process.

Then why does it show the following in Task Manager?

Image Name CPU Memory
Systems Idle Process 92 28k

This CPU number keeps moving up and down at a constant pace

because the amount that is free is changing.

it is not being used, for the most part.

it is like looking at your gas gauge, seeing how much gas you dont have, hearing a noise, and saying "there! i am sure there is something wrong with the fuel indicated ABOVE the red line!"

that would be silly, right? because above the red line indicates how much you DONT have.

same thing.

and that analogy kind of ends there, FYI. a gas gauge, as was hinted at by a previous comment, is not a good overall analogy because your system idle process has nothing to do with your computer's "fuel".

but with the my last comment you should be equipped to grasp the concept that system idle process is not actually doing anything (for the most part).

if you reread this entire page you will see that everyone is basically trying to state that your computer reserves very low priority items to occur when it isn't doing anything else.

sometimes, it does these things to conserve energy, sometimes it does these things that other programs ask it to do.

these things are associated with system idle process, but the percentile number that varies when you look at it is not an indicator of how much of which resources it is using to do those things.

if you have reason to believe that something is eating up your resources (not system idle process) with a higher priority than you desire, you may want to run adaware, spybot search and destroy (both of which you can get at download.com) and your antivirus software.

but i assure you that system idle process is not the culprit.

think of it as your computer telling you how much CPU it is NOT using.

notice how the number changes beside system idle process if the numbers beside your other processes (such as tskmgr.exe, which is the task manager...the thing you are looking at in order to see system idle process...) change as well?

it always adds up to 100...

system idle process should be what is left over after your other processes.

subtract system idle process from 100 and that is how much CPU your computer is using.

system idle process, for all intents and purposes here, uses zero.

there are things associated with it, but the number next to it does not have a direct relation to how much CPU it is using.

in other words, the number next to it is not the CPU it is using.

No.

it just isn't.

i know what it looks like.

just stop.

you are wrong.

you will have to abandon your previous thought process.

in order to learn this concept, this requires you to embrace the fact that you were thinking about it incorrectly previously.

it will be ok.

your stove will not explode because of it.

i swear to you.

i have a problem...you say that its just chewing up a lot of room because it has nothing else to do..but when i try to play music or do anything, my computer becomes very laggy...why is this?

Yes, i would like to know too - because I am having exactly the same issues. And when my system idle process is in a high percent and i flick over to the performance screen to discover that my cpu is maxing out at 99 - 100% (and i tense myself up and wait for the bang)I understand how easy it is to presume that it is the system idle process causing this. But when i can clearly see that no other programs are maxing out the cpu you gotta think - is there something wrong with the system idle process. It is a logical thought. And it seems you can all go - oh no thats silly system idle can't do that - but it is a process in a computer - something has to tell it to do what it is doing doesn't it. Perhaps there is a fault - or a new virus type encoded into system idle. No dissing unless you can provide the answer please. :) Some of my programs are set to update when system is idle - or virus scan when idle - could it be the scheduling of these tasks having confliction issues that causes the cpu to max out even when it says the system is 80 - 90% idle?? I really want to fix this issue just like the others so some smart person please give a proper valid real answer.

so how do we get rid of it without restarting the computer?

wtf?

For CPU Usage, do not look at the Processes.

Look at CPU Usage in the Performance tab. In task manager, click the tab to the right of the Process tab. You will switch to the Performance panel, which shows CPU Usage.

I have the same issue and was confused by system idle process. Thanks, well! Anyway, if you look at the cpu usage, mine jumps up to 25% regularly, at night around 3 and 4 am. I'm up working sometimes and it's really frustrating. I'm thinking of disabling windows auto updates. That's just a guess, but what else would be running? I don't have any scheduled tasks.

Am I on the right track???

Thanks!

PS. Gotta love this sentence by Eric: First, I love this sentence:

"He's become comfortable enough in his own opinion to wander into areas he only vaguely understands, and periodically it bites him on the ass."

Funny people, always one more coming in saying "how do I get rid of it", "i have this problem"...idiots

Go to the nearest window, open it, then take your computer and throw it out, that's the best solution for you and it will get rid of all your problems with the idle task, guranteed.

excuse me can any one tell me why my system idle wont let the last 50 go to a program am 18 an trying to play ff8 on my emulator could you perhaps explain for me in an email to my grans account yvonnefox25@hotmail.com

I had the same problem. It turned out that I had installed one program from a network drive on another computer, which was installed into the shell. When the other computer it was installed from was shut down, is when I had these problems. I uninstalled that program and have had no problems.

(TG - 8/23/07..."Right On")

"Excuse me, ma'am/sir: I think I understand your problem now. Please disconnect all cables and power cords, locate the original packaging material which your computer arrived to your house in and pack everything back up. Ship your computer to your closest teen age relative or children's friend and give up now. You're simply to F$#%()$*&% Stupid to ever operate a personal computer!"

I have the same issue...can't someone offer advice instead of bs?

sfsfdf

"you're simply to @#$%^ stupid..." Dude, when you're calling someone stupid, try to make sure you're using the word "too" correctly. Maybe you're "to" stupid to grab a dictionary next time. Dictionary.com.

-mike,
helping flamers be grammatically correct since 1981!

There's also a tool called DPC Latency Checker that can help determine if you've got driver troubles causing undue system activity. That, combined with procmon and procexp and help show a bit more about what the system is doing when it's idle. STFW for their links.

I am what you consider an "uneducated, un-informed newbie" when it comes to fixing this cpu stuff... and I too wondered what this system idle thing was all about.. but... I did what most idjuts do and googled it.. here I am. Now I understand the simplicity of the idea....the cup is almost full of air.. not partially full of liquid.... I get it.. it's a backwards thing... 98% simply means it's using 2% ... and it's 98% free. I opened the task manager.. saw this running at 98%... opened a couple of programs.. and geee.. guess what... the number started to dive to 60%... I get it.. thanks team.

Almo

Good-oh, mike on Sept 18! Just because someone doesn't know some particular thing (yet) does not mean he/she is stupid - just ignorant of that thing. People who are new at it, or who have found that computers have changed a LOT in the last xx years, need advice/pointers/information not derision. I have also been having this problem: computer slows down to less than a crawl & System idle process is at 99%. Found some leads to follow on this site. Thanks to those people!

Woo, i was wonderin why my computer was lockin up, when i checked my processes i seen that my System Idle was takin up 97 percent of my CPU...How the hell do i stop it from using up all of my CPU? How do i turn the shit off?????

SO IF MY SYSTEM IDLE PROCESS IS AT 99% YOU SAY THAT IS NORMAL....?

THEN WHY IS MY PC OVERHEATING WHEN THIS HAPPENS???????

I apologize if this comment sounds uneducated. I have done my best to read everything here. I have a DELL laptop with XP Professional with SP2 installed. I have just recently solved a problem where explorer.exe malfunctioned. It seems that it was since then that the System Idle Process started to appear as though it was taking up the CPU near 100%. From my tray I notice that there is barely any indication of my CPU running high yet the blinking light doesn't blink and is constantly on. I have fun scanners which have taken nearly eight hours to complete and they show no errors. It is unlikely that it is a virus, or so I would assume. I run at a bare minimum and I have never had problems before. It all happened after I fixed explorer.exe. Could it possibly be Spysweeper? That wouldn't make sense either. The process is not running. If you believe you can be of any help to me, please e-mail me at :
LLYRIVIDA@yahoo.com
Thank you.

Why all the personal attacks? There is a problem posed to open this thread and very few of the self-opined "experts" have clearly identified the source of the problem or any solution. I have the same problem and have no solution yet, but I shall find one. In my case(Win-XP-Home-SP2) the problem is fairly frequent but intermittant.

In the meantime, for others experiencing this problem I'll summarize what I think I understand from a couple of pertinent replies as they relate to my experience.

a. System Idle Process (SIP) showing 99 does not mean 99% capacity of CPU and does not noticeably (if at all) affect the speed or capacity of the operating system, firmware, or hardware. Some well-intentioned metaphors notwithstanding, that is the bottom line.

How can I accept this?
As did you, I pressed Ctrl-Alt-Del when my system was running abnormally slowly and I noticed concurrently the "Read/Write" Device Status Light on bright and continuously. On the Windows Task Manager that "SIP" CPU field showed "99" or close to it and memory usage was around "28". No other listed process showed appreciable CPU "assignment" for lack of a better description and several showed high memory usage. So I believe the (very) few respondents who suggest it is something else running invisibly in the background such as Windows Auto Update, an anti-virus or firewall automatic update or scan or similar task which does not appear on the WIndows Task Monitor for some unknown reason(Microsoft????). Confirm for yourself: Look at "SIP" in the Windows Task Monitor (Ctrl-Alt-Del) the next time the "Read/Write" Device Status Light is off and your computer seems to be running properly with no windows open - you will likely see that the "SIP" shows 95-99 and mostly 99 - just as when the computer is running sluggishly.

b. So what could the source of the problem be and what are some solutions? I don't know yet, as I said, but I am thinking perhaps:

1. It may be a scheduled automatic pre-scan and update - I do not yet know if the problem recurs at about the same time period on a regular basis which would clearly indicate this cause and then I would only have to determine which program updates then and change the schedule to a time I am not needing the computer, if that is possible. If that doesn't remedy the problem:

2. It may be a third party utility which does not integrate well or may even compete for resources within Win such as a 3rd-party Firewall software. In this case I would select one and disable or Remove/Uninstall the other. If that doesn't remedy the problem:

3. It may be a legitimately scheduled or remote site-prompted utility scan like anti-virus or Ad-Aware or Spybot or SpyDoctor which may function "behind the scenes" with no Win Task Manager indication but a steady-on "Read/Write" Device Status Light. In this case, the one suggestion above to exclude non-essential files and folders from the scan list may help but it is beyond my knowledge to implement(i.e.: suggestions at http://www.microsoft.com/communities/newsgroups/en-us/default.aspx?dg=microsoft.public.windowsupdate&tid=507fdfc2-c65b-4d88-bdee-9dc79a8e975f&p=1 ) For me the most relevent action on this possible solution is to schedule the scan when I am not needing my computer (may mean leaving it "on" overnight) and limit my scan selection to the "Smart Scan" or "Quick Scan" or equivalent options during auto scans, and only run full scans when I suspect a problem or, again, at night when I am not using the computer.

Now perhaps I am partly correct in all the above or totally missing some point buried in animous above, but this is the sort of response I would have appreciated from truly knowledgeable and helpful technical "experts" at the beginning rather than all the "shoot from the hip" obfuscation. And to the posters for whom English is at best their second language, thank you for attempting to restate the problem or offer solutions. Some of us do not even speak our first language particularly effectively or respectfully.

the system idle process was taking about 20 percent of my cpu while i had a 3d game running , the game's occupation of cu went down to 80, sometimes 60 from 99. this affected the quality of the game. the game of ten stuck for a sec when its process became less than 80, while the system idle process was taking the 20percent for no reason? so this process doesn't exactly only occupy the precious cpu when the computertis doing nothing. not in my case, coz i had an intensive game runningwhich was being hampered by the systemidleprocess.

Pitcheron, what you are describing is your computers video card bottlenecking. it cant keep up with your cpu so your game runs slow. system idle process does absolutely nothing. it just tells you how much of your cpu time is free, in your case 20%.

Same issue.

Everybody's saying that's not 'it,' but nobody is saying what 'it' is. Considering that nobody knows, it's a long thread.

casey,
do you still think i could end that prosses? or would that be stupid...

In my case my Family's Computer has been infected with spyware and I was stupid enough to give every account Administrator Privileges. If you own or are using a family computer that you know others use, then try running anti-spyware and anti-virus programs to clean the computer up. Also, spyware doesn't spread well when infecting an account without administrator privileges.

Okay, I've really tried to read past the frustration and knee jerk reactions to find the answer to the one, what I feel is the most obvious, question that should be asked here.

I don't know dvorak, and don't care who he is. Plenty of people ask questions (that some feel are stupid) out of misunderstanding, and are attacked for asking them numerous time because somebody felt they answered it clearly numerous times.

Anyone who has studied basic communication principles knows that if the people you are explaining something to, do not understand what you've explained, the end result is the same as if you haven't explained it at all. You can't simply state something in a way that is simple for you to understand, and expect that everyone else will understand it as clearly as you did. Everyone takes in information differently. Just because someone else does not understand something clearly, that you did, DOES NOT MAKE THEM AN IDIOT! It simply means the information was not delivered in the way they needed to hear it.

Resorting to calling anybody an idiot doesn't help anyone.

Frankly, I think that those who seem to be misunderstanding what the Idle process is, may not be misunderstanding it at all, but may be having trouble formulating the real question that is on their minds.

I have a feeling what I'm asking here is what most of them are really asking. If not, and some really aren't getting it, perhaps the way I've worded this will help those who are misunderstanding it.

So, here's my question. If it's been answered, sorry. I ran out of patience trying to weed through the childish drivel to find it (apologies to those who really are trying to help).

I realize there may be numerous answers to this question. That's okay. I know what some of them are. I ask in case someone may give me an answer I haven't yet thought of.

I understand system idle process is not really a process at all (for the most part), and, in theory, represents how much cpu is available for requests from my programs.

I watch my processes fairly regularly (Please don't tell me it's useless to do that. It isn't useless if you understand what you are looking at), and have a pretty good idea of what they look like when things are running normally. For example, I have a few programs that start when windows starts. When they start normally, I see them using anywhere from from 5% to 75% or higher CPU. Sometimes higher, and they are always in flux, varying up and down as one might expect. Whatever they are not using at any given moment is shown as being used by the "idle" process.

HOWEVER, when they do not respond or do not start up normally, I see them using possibly 2% to 3%, and system idle at 97% to 98% consistently.

So, my question is, "If there is so much of the processor available for use, why aren't the processes from these programs getting to the CPU? What could be stopping them from reaching the processor?

So, you see, I'm not blaming the System Idle Process for this obvious malfunction. I'm asking where should I be looking for the solution.

What exactly would prevent the processes from getting there in the first place?

New reader with similar problem. Only at the same time my computer is trying to address my floppy "A" drive, which sits there helplessly tapping away since the drive is empty. I fear this will eventually break the A drive, so I turn the computer off and back on, which clears the issue.

I too found "System Idle Process" recording high on cpu usage (or not usage)at the same time as the A drive issue, though after reading the above, that may be a side issue and not a cause.... which leads me to the question, how else can I define what's wrong?

Win XP serv pac 2, automatic download of Microsoft updates, Spybot no help, Norton on (I suspect Norton, but not for good reason) Defrag no help....

We may not be defining the issue well, but there is an issue.

I had the exact same problem, I've had the same desktop for 3 years and no such thing had ever happened to me before. one thing I realized was that this problem never happened before opening any browser, especially IE or opera or any online programs like emule, the system idle process was near 70% but in the performance tab, the CPU usage was over 90%. and I also suspected the recent windows updates so I did one thing, I disabled the windows firewall, and also automatic updates, with no need for restarting, my CPU usage became 40% with 5 programs running other than the ones in the system tray, I'm not sure if this is the exact solution but i think if other people at this place who have the same problem, try it and give us some feedback we could find out if the real problem is in the automatic updates or the windows firewall or whatever else.
one other thing to mention is: try to stay professional, making fun of others has never solved any problem, and not having some knowledge is not stupidity, if it was, you would be as stupid in finance as i am in computers.

the problem is back!

Gone quiet, hasn't it.

"We may not be defining the issue well, but there is an issue."

Indeed there is, and despite the replies, it remains unidentified.

To the people that are harping on Dvorak, instead please tell us what is it that is causing the hd activity and system slowness that ties the affected computers up. Til then, we'll assume you don't know, either.

Whether it's something running invisibly or only being governed by the idle process doesn't really matter to us. We just want it to stop hogging the machine.

Apparently, no one really knows.

I guess you geeks find it easy to write harsh comments and remarks about those who do not know as much as you about a subject, or about those who have the strength to voice thier concerns, however, you don't seem to be very open and sharing with your vast knowledge of this damn problem. Oh, maybe you have not got the foggiest either. Go back to whinging and moaning about others, successful others at that, lets face it, after reading all these ridiculous posts it's all you are good for. I'll seek assistance and guidance elsewhere and can only hope the monitors of this site see through your pointless posts and condemn you to even more of a solitary life than you must have now by banning you from entering more spitful, hate filled rubbish.. Goodbye my friends, you have helped me nought.

I am merely a self-taught computer user, however MS Windows is a great tutor (lol). Ditto for me on the problem w/CPU. I am suspect of the problem relating to AV programs, fire walls, and assorted spy/adware that are protecting the system. However, since I'm not a computer expert, I have not been able to figure out if this can be remidied. I also suspect the way hardware utilizes input is another source of problems. And then yesterday I figured out why Firefox it kept trying to get me save 2 pdf. files at start up...these were downloads that were cancelled, but somehow they didn't 'register' w/ Firefox, and continued to try to d/l, unnoticed by me. This took up lots CPU, but still have the original problem. Also while visiting MS Technet (using the Firefox browser) cpu was almost unsusable, so I think this has something to do with MS 'penalizing' non-MS browsers using their site. Also, Firefox is incredibly notorius for not releasing resources after closing browser windows. (Another problem with Firefox...using CPU resources, which it does quite frequently) And finally, Panda A/V cause a lot of problems using CPU resources, which don't necessarily show up in the task manager Processes tab, but do show in the Performance tab.
Perhaps some of the IT experts could give feedback on my theories, and how one might go about investigating a remedy.
Thanks, Jenny

While amusing as this is to you computer guru's something is wrong!!! My computer is having entirely the same problem.

It started a week ago when I got some nasty virus. Now if I leave my computer unatended to say run to Taco Bell I come back to a nightmare.

Usually It starts with me opening internet explorer. Literally 5 minutes in I wonder if I ever opened it at all. Naturally as the inpatient American I am I open it 2 more times. NOTHING!! So I try opening who knows Pure play poker..... NOTHING.

So just what the F*@$% is slowing my computer down so much? I open task manager and my system Idle is at 95-98%.

Now I am not saying my system being idle is using up all of my processor thus not allowing me to check my email.

What me and probably the first guy coming here for help not ridicule is trying to say is

WHY IS MY SYTEM AT 98% IDLE WHEN I JUST GAVE IT 4 THINGS TO WORK ON?!?!?!?!?!?!!?!?!?!?!

Ive had the computer for 2 years and like I said this has just started to occur 2 weeks ago. It is not normal. Each time I'm at 95-98% idle when each time I am giving it plenty to get 98% busy about.

This is where I would sign my name but I'd rather not be the butt of your jokes.

Female
20something.

Ha ha I just read the last few posts. All so simalar to mine.

I will look for help elsewhere because it's clear you guys dont have a clue how to fix this.

For those who would like to research their own solutions to the CPU problems:
http://www.blackviper.com/index.html
this site has very good nfo on the Processes running in Windows and how many MB/KB they use and tons of other info on getting Windows to run smoother. This site may not have everything to 'fix' the problem, but it's a good place to start.
Jenny

I feel there's sth wrong with the firewall, but one other thing, how many of you people who have the same problem have bandwidth managers installed on your system? aplications like du super controlet or net limiter, because when ever i kill the process, my system runs as smooth as 2 weeks ago!

Here's another option to try...use cautiously...disabling some services will render your computer un-bootable. The blackviper site (above post) also has services info, with better explanations

http://www.masternewmedia.org/news/2006/04/12/slow_computer_speed_up_your.htm

Jenny

Has anyone found a solution to this problem?

I am experiencing a similar problem with multiple PCs on the same network. When the Ethernet cable is plugged in the PC is extremely slow. Launching locally install applications such and Acrobat Reader, MS Word, Excel, etc. can take anywhere from 75 to 90 seconds. When looking at the process list in task manager to see what it running and what is utilizing the processing power, all I see is that the "System Idle Process" is between 98%-99% the entire time from the moment I initiate the launch of a locally install application until 90 seconds later when it finally opens. At no time the System Idle Process allocate any processor space for the application I requested. However, when I unplug the Ethernet cable from the PC, the PC performs as expected, with locally installed applications launching quickly and the system responding normally. The same behavior when comparing Safe Mode with Networking to Normal Safe Mode.

Also, ran multiple virus scans using various anti-virus engines and found nothing. When PC is on network, there is very little TX/RX traffic. So neither the NIC nor the network is being flooded with TCP/IP traffic. I've applied all the latest Windows Patches and Updates to see if this was another one of Microsoft’s famous vulnerabilities, but that did nothing as well.

I'm all out of ideas at this point and any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you in advance.

I had the same problem on my laptop - which only started recently. I traced it to Norton doing an auto scan. I changed to a manual scan and now it works ok.

Norton is not installed on any of these PCs. I actually uninstalled McAfee to make sure it wasn't the problem and that didn't resolve the issue. I also stopped all the services in msconfig and turned them back on one at a time until I found the service that was causing the issue. I discoved that is was the "workstation" service that was casuing this performance hit. I narrowed it down further to the "Client for Microsoft Networks".

I discovered that when I disable “Client for Microsoft Networks” from the properties of the NIC, the PCs perform as they should with applications launching quickly and the systems running smoothly. Based on this finding, I uninstalled “Client for Microsoft Networks” and rebooted, then reinstalled “Client for Microsoft Networks” and rebooted once more. Upon doing this, I noticed that initially performance would improve but as time went by it would sporadically get worse. However, the PCs would perform slightly better than they did before I uninstalled and reinstalled “Client for Microsoft Networks”, but still nowhere near the level of performance that they were at before Tuesday morning, when this problem arose. Obliviously, the users need “Client for Microsoft Networks” installed and enable in order to communicate over the network with other computers with in the same domain. Therefore, something behind the scenes of “Client for Microsoft Networks” is causing these performance issues, not sure what though.

Please Help...

Sammy,

Are you sure you don't have a bot phoning home?

Bert

Hi, I don't have too much experience. I had the same problem for months, check the fan that is connected with your CPU, if it doesn't work, change it. If it does clean the union because it gets dirty and don't let the air goes thru like in my case and the main unit gets hot. Now, my computer is like new and don't have that problem anymore.

It's possible that there are several problems with similar symptoms, and that one or more of the above solutions will solve any specific case. Or not.

I've got no commonalities with the above situations(or Norton), however, it wouldn't surprise me if some scans, diagnostics or maintenance tasks (setting restore points, etc.) are running unidentified under the 'idle process' and not appearing on the Task Manager.

The recurring theme I'm seeing seems to revolve around Microsoft updates and Windows Defender (and updates thereto). Disabling Automatic Updates seems to reduce unexpected tie-ups, but the trial period is in its initial stages.

Yes, I fell for this. So I did what I always do and searched for system idle process on yahoo. The first result on the page was a scam link for a company called netcom3 pretending to be consumer reports and recommending the registry cleaning software. Looking back on it netcom3 version 1.0 should have been a clue but I got alway to putting in my CC info. Luckly it all just didn't seem right and I avoided paying some loser scammers. It seems this "company" has all kinds of internet scams. The link below was the first result on yahoo when you search for "system idle process". I consider myself fairly computer literate but I was almost taken by this.

http://www.consumers-reports.net/?OVRAW=system%20idle%20process&OVKEY=system%20idle%20process&OVMTC=standard&OVADID=12424924512&OVKWID=150208641012

I saw two posts hinting at this, but perhaps not directly enough:
If the CPU is waiting for something else to finish (like reading from the harddrive, or something else like the videocard is working without any need for the CPU) it has nothing to do!

I guess the typical situation where you'd (wrongly) accuse the idle process for "stealing your CPU" is when a program slows down and the computer itself starts ticking like mad. This ticking is the harddrive searching (or the CD/DVD etc running) wich may be because it is doing a lot of searching, reading and or writing, this is why the CPU is idle: it's waiting for the harddrive to finish whatever it is doing.

The stuff going to and from the harddrive (when you're not explicitly saving or reading files) is typically pagefiles in the virtual memory being moved between the RAM and harddisk. When the memory page needed is not in the RAM and must be read from disk it's called a "page fault" to many page faults slow down your computer without using much CPU.
See:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_memory
and
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Page_fault#Performance

(Sorry long post...)

I found this place when I googled system idle process. I like a few others here, had a misunderstanding of what that number represented based on how the information is displayed. Thanks to all for helping me understand.

It seems, based on what I've read here, the widows task manager does not give a complete list of all the tasks a computer is trying to do.

Is there some where, on my computer, I can go and view all processes, applications, tasks, etc. and how much of my system resources are being used?

I have always worked best, when I am trouble shooting something, to gather all the possible pertinent information and narrow down the most likely candidates before I go asking questions.

I did find the answer to my initial question which was: What is causing my computer to run so slowly this time? It was my anti-virus running in the back ground and did not show up in the windows task manager at all. Again thanks for the help thus far and I hope some one can give me the answer I am looking for.

Dalton

There very well could be many different problems being describe in this thread. The issue I had sounds very similar, this info solved the problem.

I think the most helpful bits are
1. Get Process Explorer immediately, Task Manager is misleading you.
2. Hardware Interrupts will crush your system when opening certain Software (go figure, only Microsoft would hide this in a section titled System IDLE Process)

My system has been dog doo slow since I did a reinstall a couple weeks back. Process Explorer was showing some outrageous hardware interrupt rates, on occasion as high as 50% and regularly at 20%.

I’d let it roll for a couple weeks simply because it was low on my frustration list and I was trying to roll through other things. It finally pissed me off enough tonight that I spent some time nailing it down. Turns out ATA/IDE controllers will often revert back to PIO mode instead of Ultra-DMA. (MS KB article on the problem here.)

Check the problem by examining the controller’s Primary and Secondary IDE settings: Device Manager -> IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers -> Primary or Secondary IDE Channel -> Properties -> Advanced Settings. Look at the Current Transfer Mode field. If it’s “PIO” then it’s a FUBAR PITA and you’ll need to uninstall the driver, reboot and let XP do its magic reinstall.

Sucky, but fixable. Now I’ve got my shiny system back shiny again.

Using XP I too have this system idle bull---- happening almost every time I log on at times up to 98% CPU useage. I do not agree with any of the solutions listed in this thread although I have not yet tryed Mooses suggestion above yet.

It also happens inadvertantly whether or not I have multiple or single tasks in operation at any one time. Its anoying as hell especially when I am trading the market, I have spoken to three IT guys on this and like auto repair mechanics all they have are trial and error approaches each time screwing something else up. The last one has screwed up my CDrom writer and in "My Computer" it now reads my media device ports all differently. My flash stick which plugs into a usb port now reads as if it is in a photo memory flash slot.

I agree with the thread creator that this is just wrong (poor programing)whatever this process is doing. It never did this on my previous PCs and operating systems.

system idle process be damned.......Im goin fishin

The cpu runnign on idle at a high rate no problem...worry when tis another program doing it permatly with only basic programs running-ie: not being used for hrs! I have been having issues with mediasync running at 100% even if you try to set it to a low priority it still will run at a 100% when your not using the computer. After a while the computer makes horrible noices that I swear sounds like its burning out. The only option you get is to end the procees tree and hope that the computer will be fine.
You people using Norton and a few of these other spywear programs be carefull. Norton is very slow and takes up too much comp space. It still misses a great deal of spy wear and viruses. I even had some-one tell me they hacked in past it! I discovered a virus that will change the settings of all standard antivirus and spywear programs. They are using flaws in these programs, IE7 and in the windows frame to get in and attack the computer cashing it to crash. Nothing will pick it up either unless you really know what your doing. I'm still learning so I'm not that good! Itunes is another one they have had fun with. Spybot is on the list of malwear on microsoft bob, It too will have problems with viruses stopping it from working too.
So back to the cpu.... Any help for how to fix the mediasync would be great. I fixed it before but the information seems to have been lost in cyberspace and this has only become an issue since I got crashed, curtacy of netspy. Now just to work out whats causing it to freeze with digital break up and the go blank on the screan even with sound still. Lets hope its not the graphics/video card or worse another virus... * headache*

System idle numbers or % are only relevent if you understand the meaning. In this case the meaning is reversed in the statement. If your idle is at 95% then you are only using 5% of the cpu. This in no way affects the computers ability to perform. Is surely has no bering on the game play at Pureplay. Their coding is crap. Their softare is crap and they should be charged with fraud as they promote real poker play when they allow the softare to decide who is going to win and not the player. This should be outlawed.

what happens if i terminate it? would it make my computer go faster? How possible is it that I might loose data?

Disabled Automatic Updates and Indexing Service. No further problems.

I think there is a system idle issue. When monitoring programs in process explorer, the processor spends more time in system idle than in processing. It is jerking in and out with peaks and valleys occurring and no steady processing. It seems incredible to me that there are repeated spikes in the processing cycle instead of steady processing.

There are many different problems that can cause the symptoms described above, but not all have the same probablility of occurance; i.e., there a few 'usual suspects'. The usual suspects include applications/processes that at arbitrary times auto update themselves and/or anti-spyware/virus apps that run scans in the background. Also a badly fragmented harddrive will cause similar symptoms. Here's what I do to minimize such symptoms, turn all virus/spyware checking off (the cure is worse than the cause, instead just don't open questionable binary files) BUT occasionally use these apps to run scans at MY convenience. Set up my browser to ask me to ok ALL activeX controls - it's a pita but if you don't download activeXs from questionable sites, you won't inadvertantly download spyware. Keep my main HD at less than 90% full and defragment it at regular intervals. Run a good registry cleaner from time to time. To disable unwanted/unneeded processes, run msconfig.exe at start up, google your procs and id those associated with anti-virus/spyware apps then disable them. If it's an MS proc, other than auto updates, it's probably needed. Hope this helps.

I always thought that "Scientists" e.g., SETI, use my computer to sort their mountain of data?

I find the system idle process really confusing. If it really is set in the lowest priority, how come it still uses 90& of my CPU even when I run some other program with higher priority?
Can someone help me with me prob.? thx

I disabled the automatic updates as advised above and it's totally solved the problem.

I get System Idle CPU numbers in mid to high 90s accompanied by McShield in the mem Usaqe colum of 20,000-40,000K, during which times I pretty much can not use the computer unless I hilight and then End Process the McShield and anything else that begins Mc, I speculate this is the AOL loaded McAfee security stuff. Sometime I go paint the house or wax the car to kill time until it settles down. The real McAfee nightmare is when it scans my hardrive for viruses, I might as well go away on a few day vacation.

The idle process in the 90s seems associated with one or another Mc beginning processes at work in the many thousand K range, McShield in particular is 20,000-50,000K, only by ending every process beginning with Mc and I then allowed to hit a key and have something happen, I am at times down to painting the house, waxing the car, even a two day vacation while the computer disc whirs full speed until giving me back the right to have a keystroke actually effect the computer. I expect this is all related to the AOL McAfee security sytem. thanks AOL.

This is all goes back to 1970s modest geeky aspirations. It is a a structural failure. Ctrl Alt Del is a sop. SIP is a symptom, Windows is a hand crank not an internal combustion engine.I can google in 10 seconds on an ipod, firing up a desktop is like shovelling coal.

If system idle only runs when the system is idle then why do some games start lagging and when I open up the processes in the game system idle is using 96% while I am trying to move and it continues to lag. If it truely only ran when the system was idle when trying to move around in the game the amount of CPU the system idle process would use would decrease. It doesn't so it has to be able to run some processes regardless of other CPU useage. To say it can't do that because that is not what it is meant to do is naive. Things don't always do what they are supposed to.

Hi.

I've been having the same problem lately.
Could you maybe give me some tips on how to fix this?
Contact me at moparjagex@yahoo.com if you get this with some tips.

I'd greatly appreciate it.
Thanks.

I saw two posts hinting at this, but perhaps not directly enough:
If the CPU is waiting for something else to finish (like reading from the harddrive, or something else like the videocard is working without any need for the CPU) it has nothing to do!

I guess the typical situation where you'd (wrongly) accuse the idle process for "stealing your CPU" is when a program slows down and the computer itself starts ticking like mad. This ticking is the harddrive searching (or the CD/DVD etc running) wich may be because it is doing a lot of searching, reading and or writing, this is why the CPU is idle: it's waiting for the harddrive to finish whatever it is doing.

The stuff going to and from the harddrive (when you're not explicitly saving or reading files) is typically pagefiles in the virtual memory being moved between the RAM and harddisk. When the memory page needed is not in the RAM and must be read from disk it's called a "page fault" to many page faults slow down your computer without using much CPU.
See:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_memory
and
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Page_fault#Performance

http://www.subtitlelive.com/

Ok, it may seem strange, but I am running World of Warcraft, installing a game, have Firefox working, and copying a file from my friend's external hard drive to mine...

But when I press Ctrl+Alt+Del to check my System Idle Process, it's eating 90 of my memory STILL.

Can anyone please help me or give me their insights about this? Thanks

Hi,
I do not have a solution, just a reiteration that there does appear to be something strange in the workings of SIP, I tend to have several browser windows open at a time, as well as my programming IDE, yesterday I was having some serious slow downs on my system, and they led me to research that led me here. My problem is resolved, I actually let my computer sleep last night, and this morning my CPU usage, and memory usage reports from Windows Task Mananger are all correct, and the system is humming right along fine. Being someone who rarely (I mean rarely) turns off his machines, my processes tend to get a little out of hand.

The old adage did play out well for me, and I do not mean this as a blast, but if turning your machine off, unplugging it (clears any excess power) and letting it rest for about ten minutes does not help, then it is probably time to call Geek Squad, or some other repair service. Coming to a public forum can be helpful, but you also often have to wade through tons of geek bash garbage (BTW, I consider myself a geek in the extreme) to get to the meat.

So let your computer rest, actually rest, then is you are still having the same problem try calling a real pro to have a look. If they can't fix it they usually don't charge.

Peace,
GrayOne

Try disabling the following:

Automatic Updates
Indexing Service <-- This service "runs" whenever your system is in an idle state, and is a severe drag on your system

Also, read this:
http://www.ss64.com/nt/slow_browsing.html <--- If Explorer or other things "feel" slow even when the system is "idle", try what is suggested in here.

Honestly: Try a faster hard drive and more RAM. Those 2 MB cache drives that ship by default with most Dell, HP, Acer and Compaq machines just don't cut it.

can you please tell me how to diable system idle processsss. I can't get anything done........

I was having the same problem. I realised that there was system updates running in the background. Try leaving your PC on overnight so it can get up to date with all the updates or turn system update OFF.