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: <a href="http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1895,1923151,00.asp">Apple will switch to Windows.</a>

"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.

I don't know if this may be the problem solver but I too was having the same problem when I fired up the computer it seemed to be slower than molasses I also noticed the hard drive was working considerably. I also noticed that idle process was running very high. Then I tried to connect using the Firefox Web Browser and it took forever to load. I uninstalled Firefox and re-installed the new Firefox 3 RC1 and I am running great. Maybe that was it I don't know For what it's worth my two cents
TWLAAAS

Haven't you missed the point?

He says, "...all your clicks suddenly ignite and the screen goes crazy with activity."

I think he's saying that even though the machine is idling, it's not responding to mouse clicks - it's buffering them, though. Which is why you get teh flurry of activity all of a sudden. I've certainly seen this type of behaviour before.

When my computer's idle process is taking much of the CPU i open Phun. I didn't buy a nice fast computer to hve it sitting pretty doing nothing.

Few of you have addressed the problem. System idle processes show amount of CPU available, the question is why is the cpu not doing anything? Becouse it is WAITING on something. Most common item is connectivity to a printer, remote disk drive, or network connection. For example, if you are mapped to a remote disk drive or printer that is located on a remote machine (you know, the printer located down the hall on your spouses machine or that shared folder on her machine when you copied those photos from her machine to yours) and that printer is out of paper or the machine is offline you can have up to a 2-minute wait for the connection service in Win XP to give up. This is often seen with "(Not Responding)" message on your My Computer screen.

This System idel process setup is simply not efficient.
Simply put, if the operations were so important that 90% of the processsing power must be held up, then some qualified genius plese tell me and the rest of the concern individuals why you can cancel the action you are trying to perform and then proceed again with the intended function and all of a sudden the System idle Process doesn't need to do what it does???

I was trying to print. My intended process was held up by the System Idle process. I closed everything out and tried again and it worked quickly. Therefore, hogging the CPU is really not necessary.

By the way good stuff ""Rich"". Now if we can get a cancellation function to free up the CPu we'd be in business.

So, In one line....Is there any working solution to the problem ?

Why are so many people in denial about the negative impact on computer use caused by System Idle Process.

When System Idle Process is running at 99 percent, it absolutely positively sucks all the capacity from my machine, even that needed to perform the funcitons which I have asked it to do.

When System Idle Process gets the whim to run out of control, there isn't enough computer capacity left to run Microsoft Word.

When System Idle Process is running at 99 percent, it absolutely positively sucks all the capacity from my machine, even that needed to perform the funcitons which I have asked it to do.

When System Idle Process gets the whim to run out of control, there isn't enough computer capacity left to run Microsoft Word.

couple theories on this subject, most have been stated already.

1.the speed difference between your CPU and other hardware can and problems will, cause problems.

e.g. your video card, your sound card, and your network card, all run slower than your CPU, so the CPU has more spare time.(bottlenecking)

2.the hardware is busy performing a task, and CPU can't continue because it has that programs 'info' loaded into the processor memory(yes, the CPU has it's own memory)

e.g. your hard-drive is reading an exceptionally large file, and your CPU doesn't have more space to 'put it off to the side'

3.it's running background tasks. things Microsoft knows about, but you don't. and they want it that way.

looking at the SIP I have noticed some peculiar results. if you have the task manager open(not maximized, but visible) and move another window around the screen, the CPU for the other process will go up, and the CPU for the SIP will go down.

this works well in installation/downloading programs. I tricked an online installer into moving from 14 kps to 27 kps with this method.

if one has a mouse recorder(like I do), one could set it to perform an infinite loop(until the process is canceled with task manager) that would keep moving a window. this might not work to well for games though.

one thing I wonder about, right clicking the SIP option does not give you a menu, but the "End Process" button is still enabled. what would happen if you ended SIP?

I had similar problems for two weeks and continued to run antispy ware and anti malware. I even starting looking at new computers until I found a blog that gave the reason and solution to my problem.

If you are having a problem with idle system idle taking all of your cpu speed and/or hardware interruptions, it is most likely from an accidental switch by your computer of IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers to PIO mode when they are supposed to be in DMA mode. To fix this, go to the control panel, open system, select hardware/select device manager, then click to expand IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers. Right click to select properties of the Primary and/or Secondary IDE Channel. Go to Advanced Settings to make sure the current transfer mode is DMA mode. If you see PIO mode anywhere in the current transfer mode or transfer mode, you will have to uninstall the driver. To do so, you need to be in the Primary or secondary IDE properties menu, then select driver, then uninstall. After uninstalling, restart the computer. When you restart, Windows XP will automatically find the driver for both the primary and secondary IDE channels. You will then have to restart and the problem should be fixed. I am not sure if this works with Vista or any other Windows versions besides XP.

It should work. I am passing this on because it took me weeks to actually fix this and I hope to save someone the headache and money of reinstalling windows or buying a new computer. Please spread the knowledge to help others.

You guys seem to think everyone that uses a cpu is a computer scientist most of us just play with photos and e mail Lucky for you or else a computer would cost a million dollars, and the internet would cost more than you guys will make in a year. I know you guys are smart but the real money is in robbing widows and orphans. Only a few dozen geeks make the big bucks so dont be so fing smug. I have noticed when the system idle process is high the cpu goes slower I didnt notice any solutions High IQ boys. Hope you are having fun typing LOL

I'm getting a high idle process which is making AOE II jerky when I scroll around, but I'm running Firefox 3, Windows Live! Messenger, Comodo FIREWALL, WinAmp, and BitDefender.

Any help?

So, if the system idle process isn't really using 98% of my cycles, why do I get strange delays while typing whenever the system idle process is shown using that amount? I'll be typing an email, and the system can't keep up (I'm not fast). All the other processes are showing sero or near it.

I really wish several of you silly bastards would offer some realistic advice instead of trying to play all this geek one-upmanship. "Oh ho, aren't we just a little wiser that Dimbo? He didn't know about that!" You sound like a bunch of elementary school kids.

Or is it that all you wannabe brainiacs really don't understand the system idle process well enough to offer any sound input? That would seem the case as a majority of you silly cunts offered any response worth a damn in about fifty posts. Get a life. If you can't come up with realistic solutions, go play with your RAM and shut the fuck up.

Bills Cat
The Pissed Off Yankee -- hope ya don't like it.

Andy G,

My laptop suddenly started running very slowly a couple of weeks ago, it was becoming unbearable to use, taking 15 mins to start up etc. Tried everything to get it working again as you did.

Used your little tip and it's working perfectly again!

Thank You Thank you!

Does anyone have any suggestions? Everytime I have iTunes open and plug my iPod into the computer the System Idle Processes takes over and turns all programs running to Not Responding, so I can't add / delete anything from my iPod. Why is it doing this and how can I fix it?

All,
I have read through the comments pertaining to system idle process. My computer is fluctuating every 0.5 second or so (constantly) between 0% and 100% CPU usage and constantly switching between 95% usage between system idle process and WUSB45GC. Is this normal? I get the feeling that two programs are competing with CPU? Any help is appreciated.
Harry

Something that I think would clarify this discussion is that a program can be slow for more reasons than not having enough CPU time available. If a program is waiting for some other operation to complete -- reading a file from disk, storing data to a USB flash drive, rendering a frame on the graphics card, the CPU may be idle (and thus the Idle Process may "hog" the CPU, since there's nothing better for the CPU to do), while the program appears to lag or run slowly.

I actually experience this on my Linux system sometimes -- normally, my programs start very quickly, since I've opened them recently and they're still cached in RAM. But if I do some operation that uses the disk a lot, like a backup or a file search, programs will launch much more slowly the next time. They don't use a lot of *CPU* when starting, but there is a lot of disk activity.

Hello All, I think most ALL the problems mentioned above stems from programs automatically starting like: Auto defraging the HD or Boot sectors defraging etc, virus searches automatically activated, or maybe viruses introduced into the run folder in the registry files. Your system tray should show you what program is usuing up your resources. Check out out your run folder in Regedit, currect user, software, microsoft, windows, current version, look for your run folder. Items in this folder run automatically when you start your computer. If you dont want any program in the folder to run, delete it. CAUTION: Messing around in the registry can screw up your computer. Everytime is I see my computer bogged down, it is ALLWAYS one of the above problems. Disable or cancel operation and your computer is back to normal.

Let me make grammar corrections.
Hello All,
I think most ALL the problems mentioned above stems from programs automatically starting like: Auto defragging the HD or Boot sector defragging etc, or virus searches automatically activated, or maybe viruses introduced into the run folder in the registry files. Your system tray should show you what program is using up your resources. Check out your run folder in Regedit, current user, software, Microsoft, windows, current version, and look for your run folder. Items in this folder run automatically when you start your computer. If you don’t want the program in the folder to run, delete it. CAUTION: Messing around in the registry can screw up your computer. For some reason these auto Every time is I see my computer bogged down, it is ALLWAYS one of the above problems. Disable, stop or cancel the program and your computer is back to normal. One person above mentioned letting defragging and virus searches run when you are not using the computer. For some reason these programs when automatically activated are reflected in the System idle processes usage.

I had the same issue and it completely ended after I turned off automatic update completely.

Finished reading this = the time it took for my system to free itself. It is not indexing, or updates in my case as they have always been off. Possibly hardware as I have dual monitors one being a HDTV.

Observation:

SIP was at 90% in process tab. In performance tab the CPU was @ 100%.
Now SIP reads 97% and CPU in performance tab is 0%. It took a good half an hour and nothing I can tell has changed. Yes my PC is always on...but then why is is so happy now all of a sudden? Looked in the device manager also, not seeing conflicts. Seems to me that yes in fact...SETI is using my PC. Come to think about it I think I started having this problem when the patriot act became effective.

So the question is actually...what is my CPU working on that doesn't show up in processes? It certainly was busy.

80% of people have the same system idle process problem but still no solution from any compuetr expert!!!!how awfull it is!!!

If u guys say that its coz of some virus or malware then its impossible coz i have latest kaspesky internet security n i had a full computer scan no virus or malwaare was detected...Soo y the hell 99%of my CPU is used by system idle process.Any answers????

Hey, thanks for explaining it to me, I know a lot about computers and such, but the System Idle Process has always stumped me. And I thank you for explaining it so well.

Scanning the comments on line about this, the problem I see that is repeatedly overlooked is that the computer heats up massively because of the amount of CPU that is being used by SIP. It would be nice to hear a solution that at least causes the fan to not have to run (like it was when I first go the computer and it did not overheat or kick on the fan except for when it was obviously running several programs at once.

Could this be Microsoft's secret way to tap and channel the power of hundreds and thousands of computers into an exponentially powerful processing machine for their own benefit ?

If done at the appropriate times at short intervals.. most people won't even notice. Then again, I think I had too much Kona coffee.

Anyways, I disabled Automatic Updates and Indexing Service. No further problems.

------------------------------------------------------------------
Source: http://www.softwaretipsandtricks.com/windowsxp/articles/275/1/Disable-Automatic-Updates

To turn it off completely and for good do as follows:

1. Go into Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Services.

2. Highlight the service called "Automatic Updates". You will know when you have the correct one because you will see a description about it telling you what it does.

3. Right click once highlighted and click stop to terminate the service.

4. Right click on it again and go to Properties. Half way down the first tab there is "Startup Type:" change this to disabled.

Congratulations. You have now disabled Automatic Updates service. Not only will this make certain the service won't run, but by disabling it properly you are freeing up system resources as they won't be diverted to running a service that you don't use.

Please test the solutions provided, and for the love of god post the solution at the top of the page. Desperate users seeking help here, should be able to find a solution as fast as possible, not drown into a sea of n3rdy p|c battlez.

------------------------------------------------------------------------
Keep
It
Simple,
Stupid !
------------------------------------------------------------------------

What is strange to me is when the system idle process is taking 99 percent of the cpu with 100% cpu usage.... I just got given to me a sony vaio vgn fs600 with "problems". My friend was quoted $600 at the geek squad so she bought a new one and gave up on this... It was free and I was able to boot into safe mode, run check disk and eventually reinstall winxp pro. Sony shipped this laptop originally with xp home, but always neglects to ship the software... Turns out there is a "secret" partition with the reinstall... Well, in hindsight I might have tried that, but who wants xp home if you have a legit copy of pro... Now, it takes about 30 mins to boot and when I have more then 3-4 windows up it bogs terribly. So, instinctively I look at the processes... To my surprise the process taking most of the cycles is the process using the LEAST amount of mem... I don't pretend to be a computer genius but I have spent a lot of time fixing them. What is up with my FREE vaio!? please help.

Thank you Andy G, your suggestion fixed my problem with the SIP. Still takes forever to boot, but that was the worst of my problems, here is a copy of what helped me. Again, thanks!

"I had similar problems for two weeks and continued to run antispy ware and anti malware. I even starting looking at new computers until I found a blog that gave the reason and solution to my problem.

If you are having a problem with idle system idle taking all of your cpu speed and/or hardware interruptions, it is most likely from an accidental switch by your computer of IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers to PIO mode when they are supposed to be in DMA mode. To fix this, go to the control panel, open system, select hardware/select device manager, then click to expand IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers. Right click to select properties of the Primary and/or Secondary IDE Channel. Go to Advanced Settings to make sure the current transfer mode is DMA mode. If you see PIO mode anywhere in the current transfer mode or transfer mode, you will have to uninstall the driver. To do so, you need to be in the Primary or secondary IDE properties menu, then select driver, then uninstall. After uninstalling, restart the computer. When you restart, Windows XP will automatically find the driver for both the primary and secondary IDE channels. You will then have to restart and the problem should be fixed. I am not sure if this works with Vista or any other Windows versions besides XP.

It should work. I am passing this on because it took me weeks to actually fix this and I hope to save someone the headache and money of reinstalling windows or buying a new computer. Please spread the knowledge to help others."
"Andy G"

I am still having problems with this happening. I have just found a website that tells how to change your default udma to pio from 6 errors to 6 errors consecutively, here is the link to that most informative page.

<a href="http://users.bigpond.net.au/ninjaduck/itserviceduck/udma_fix/">http://users.bigpond.net.au/ninjaduck/itserviceduck/udma_fix/</a>

If your not comfortable with regedit I don't recommend trying this.
Good luck and I hope this helps.

I also have this same problem on my laptop since a week. I thought it had to do with an infection, i'm still not sure that it isn't. Unfortunately Andy G his fix didn't help me, the IDE controllers are already set to ultra DMA. Please give me some suggestions what otherwise might cause the problems and i can do about it

Weird coincidence is that the problems started not long after i blew some dust away from the van. Could it be related?!

This thread is great, has me laughing my ass of for the last 35 minutes. No I don't actually think people are stupid or anything. in fact i rather think people are smart until proven otherwise.

Anyway after several years of trying to educate people about very simple computer graphics i have come to the following conclusions:

* Many users regard computers as a matter of faith, they do all sorts of things including reciting their favorite piece of the bible to the computer. Fine that's how it is, try to stop it, this really helps you.

* Drawing conclusions about things you don't fully understand is dangerous, because its damn hard to get rid of that conclusion. So to become better it helps if you sometimes back down and realize you know nothing. In fact the more you do know the more certain you are you know nothing. This is also why most 18 year old know more than 5 year old even tough it might not be true (that does not however mean it can not be true in some particular case).

* Just because 2 problems sound alike don't mean they are caused by the same thing. There are several people here that are saying they have the same problem without even knowing its the one and same. Its not a simple question to answer theres several reasons for slowdowns.

Now i use computers for computing all day long (right now i use a 100 or so cpu's at 99% non idle). And i have a pretty good feel for what slows computers down, it literary costs me bout a month every year. (time is money because we don't live eternally, life being the most valuable commodity I have, seriously. All others pale in comparison).

First one must understand that the cpu's you use are quite fast for a limited number of things. Unfortunately sometimes not fast enough, you could buy a faster one but it rarely helps in the way one would think. Yes I know you think your 1300$ computer is expensive and should be fast enough but it is neither.

Measuring performance on the merits of cpu speed is totally blind unfortunately that was what counts if you want to feel superior. For me the biggest problem is the main bus speed, this means I value the motherboard more than I value the cpu. Imagine having a sports car that is really fast its of no use if the roads are not paved. This is what usually happens the computer shifts its gear and waits for things to happen elsewhere because the speed of transfer to it is so slow. This slows he computer down but does not tax the cpu.

Now its fine if this all is in the memory that's is pretty ok (tough not fast enough for me), but when the memory runs out computer goes to the next best thing the hard drive that's even slower. So there's a hierarchy of whats economical to use for speed.

Then there's bad drivers, these KILL your speed the 1300$ is actually lump of useless metal for most parts when this happens. Usually getting more expensive tested parts helps here since they get better support. So the sad thing for some users is that the 1300$ computer is not very good. But you can't fix this with little money alone.

Over this there's all sorts of weird reasons even I sometimes attribute to faith buy joke. Some of them make sense afterward some don't. And trust me a computer is pretty complex i doubt anybody knows how it REALLY works most of the time.

To get some help to your questions. Get someone who knows what they are doing take look at at the computer. But dont count on it helping you without actually doing something that might bust your economy. ;)

And yes system idle process is not all idle, but it accounts stuff you wouldn't avoid anyway. It may have bugs yes but its not the culprit its easy to get ahead and think it is. But something inside it MAY be indicating the culprit most likely not.

i was just wondering what happends when you turn the idle process off

> i was just wondering what happends when you turn the idle process of

You can not! but if you could youd just probably kill the computer outright.

OMG.... so many people reply talk offtopic nobody seems to know whats really happening. YES the idle processing doesont stear your cpu memory, yes it is completely useless and I give you the solution to your problem without knowing what you have on your computer. Read so many forums but didnt solve *hit... For your computer to stop whats it doing right now... blocking and working like a slow poke, UNINSTALL SPYWARE DOCTOR

Can I pls. close it...it truly is bugging. Whenever I look at my system 95% of the CPU memory is chewed up by the System Idle Process. It is a big big headache.

Will there be any problem if I shut it up!

I believe the slow down of your computer depends on a lot of factors. When the system idle process shows high %, it may provide some indication of hidden problems. When Netmunkey discussed about a driver issue or hardware issue, he was probably right. When Totalamoto discussed about automatic update, he was probably right also. This applies equally to other experiences discussed in this post. In my case, it was a driver problem. When I installed my Dlink WUA 1340 driver on my XP, I did not pay that much attention to it so a wrong version (Vista or other version) was used and hell it was. My computer was cramped at 95-99% on system idle process most of the time. After talking to at least 3 tech supporters, I finally managed to talk to the right guy and he told me to download the right version (for XP Service Pack 3); that pretty much fixed my problem. So before you install a new hardware or software on your computer, make sure the right version or package is used. Good luck to all.

My system idle is hogging up 95% of my ram causing my computer to run extremely sluggish. It literally makes 5 times the noise when computing and flicks the activity light by simply closing pages. Its a virus and ive tracked it back to smss.exe so far. I too am looking for a solution and if your reading this then youve read an hours worth of useless blog to get here. So close this window out and look elsewhere. DM IA

Wow. Out of all of that. I maybe got two ideas that could actually be the problem, out of the entire thing. useless thread, written by a whole bunch of computer savey bloggers, that never gives a real solution, Which they all somehow inheirently know, for if they had this problem, they would not be hammering the people not savey enough to fix it. I play Game on the computer, I don't care how it works, as long as it works. But when it starts not to work, I look to the people who know much more then I for support. But when I get to a thread where people look like they know what they are talking about, read the entire thing, and am no better off fifteen minutes later, cause all it truly is, is the ramblings of geeks with nothing better to do, then state that, since their comp doesn't have this problem, it doesn't matter who else does. I don't care what CPU is or does. It gets high, my comp gets slow. Simple, easy, and to the point. Now could someone please be productive, for the uneducated folk. Write a list of the top five or six things it could be. The solution to those problems. And maybe I will be able to run Star Craft again, lol. Seriously, Getting information that is actually privey to this problem fron this thread, is harder then E.T. for the Atari. Yes I am somewhat of a nerd myself. But one that has no understanding of how a comp should run.

Oh, and the Two things that I found actually helpful, for those who made it through the thread,a and didn't catch.

1. Old Drivers. Not my personal Problem, but it is definetly worth looking into.

2. The new XP patch(or old one, IDK). I realised that these problem started the last time I updated my computer, and The S.I.P. problem also hit my brothers computer as well, after the patch. If it is windows, they better climb out of their cubicles and FIX IT!!!!!

I had this problem also on my HP Laptop. After trying lots of software fixes I found that the fan inside my laptop was not working correctly and the laptop was overheating.

Don't know if it helps but it's somethig to try.

Joe

Bloody hell! Wasting my time!
All you numb skulls rambling on without a decent solution!
Will the administrator stop these people from wasting our precious time? That's on top of time wasted by system idle process!!!!!!

Ok, so you say if System Idle is running at 95% it means the pc is doing "nothing", but I still maintain the fact that this is an interruption which is VERY annoying. It makes NO sense for a pc to be doing very little and yet rev into jet mode as if it's ready to lift off! You want to talk this Dvorak guy down, and say it's "normal" and means the pc is doing nothing at the moment. Well, it is STILL a serious issue. Everything freezes, lags...it does take up to 30 minutes for it to chill out and sometimes you cannot even shut down. Everything is working on this pc, but this does happen from time to time-and like tonight, it's happening over and over again! Instead of bitching about it, how about coming up with a solution and becoming the world's hero?!

your problem is all that spyware and viruses in your task manager.

haha

Yep, even a year and a half later J.D. is a dope. I can safely say this even though I quit that magazine after less than a year into a subscription.

Another thing I have learned about computing is that Linux does not have a System Idle Process. Instead, they have other unique means to slow and hang my computer up.

The process daemon: You might want to search it up on the internet because I may remember seeing it as a trojan/virus

I saw where I could find the reason I keep getting a not resp..... and after I've read everything, the only thing that I've gotten is that most of you think Dvorak is a prick that likes to be read and doesn't know very much about computers. Maybe one of you super geeks can tell me why I get not responding so often on pureplay poker? My cpu is never running at more than 32% so that should take system idle out of play. I would like to know more about this pureplay poker if anyone knows.

I saw where I could find the reason I keep getting a not resp..... and after I've read everything, the only thing that I've gotten is that most of you think Dvorak is a prick that likes to be read and doesn't know very much about computers. Maybe one of you super geeks can tell me why I get not responding so often on pureplay poker? My cpu is never running at more than 32% so that should take system idle out of play. I would like to know more about this pureplay poker if anyone knows.

hello readers,

I was reading whole troubles and all dispointment over this whole page. Let me clear you guys that the Ide is a thread but good thead like few bactareas are good for us. the defination is listed below.

System Idle Process - You cannot end this process from Task Manager.
This process is a single thread running on each processor, which has the sole task of accounting for processor time when the system isn't processing other threads. In Task Manager, expect this process to account for the majority of processor time.

I don't know if i will come here or not but you can contect me at my e-mail address ali.imtiaz@verizon.net

Take care and prayer to God for me to have more knowledge to help mankind

Regards,
Sony Ali

I simply updated my BIOS and the system idle issue is now history.

It looks like the majority of the problems are solved by Andy G's comment and all the people that mentioned killing the automatic update process (search the thread for "Andy G" and "Source: http:")

I'd just like to add this free program that works well speeding up my system.
Advanced System Care
http://www.download.com/Advanced-SystemCare-Free/3000-2086_4-10407614.html?tag=mncol

Please note, the program allows you to restore everything back to the way you had it if you don't like what happened.

I recommend you just use the "Maintain Windows" section with the "Privacy Sweep" block unchecked, unless you DO want to delete your past browsing history.

You can try the other stuff if you want but check to make sure everything on your computer still works. I had a Python IDLE program blocked by a firewall change done through "Diagnose System > Security Defense" option. Luckily the restore feature allowed me to get it back to normal.

Id like to actually know what my idle process does... is it the halt thingie or something else... i think something is wrong, i run vista on a macbook and its heating like hell, so much that my adaptors cord melted at one end (fixed it) then melted at the other end (fixed it again... hey im not gonna pay 130$ for a new adapter) then my adapter finally died (okay, ill buy that new adapter).
Yet whatever i do, my tasklist (or procexp list) doesnt look wrong, with procexp most of the time over 85. So im having doubts about that idle process cheating on me and doing things its not supposed to do. hmmmmm...

ok, so i read the explenation before the posts... and

"chewing up 95 percent of the processor's cycles", that's normal: it simply means your CPU isn't working very hard on anything at the moment"

doesnt sound very right.. a few days ago my computer was pretty quick, i could run 2 WoW accounts on this, and the few times i ctrl/alt/delete the idle thingie wasnt really doing anything, if i had nothing going, very very little CPU usage was being used... and things ran smoothly, as soon as the system idle process started acting up and taking allot of resources, things got very choppy and laggy, my computer slowed down allot. im not expert on computers by a long shot... but the system idle process is the only thing that is doing a lot of stuff.

Thanks to moose (January 6, 2008 08:42 PM ) with the tip on ATA/IDE controllers reverting to PIO mode instead of Ultra-DMA. This has been the biggest improvement I so far in a six month quest to figure out what was wrong with my slow running system.

After going through all of the time wasting Dvorak bashing I found Michael's post on Nov 25, 2008. On my system the problem was caused by a Microsoft update. Entered safe mode, restored to a day before the update and the system now runs fine. Good Luck.

Awesome! You are using Ultramon also!

I QUOTE THE ABOVE: "In other words, if the idle task is chewing up 95 percent of the processors cycles, that's normal, it simply means your CPU isn't working very hard on anything at the moment."

That's exactly what I was searching for. You answered my question, Thanks.

Hello all,

I dropped into this thread thinking the title was a joke... but was surprised to see that many are asking the question "why is the system idle process hogging my resources?" in all seriousness. I see that many people have tried explaining the situation, but more keep chiming in with the question... so I'm going to try to explain some things about using Windows Task Manager and interpreting the information about your CPU and memory useage.

A little background:
I am an undergrad Computer Science student, and have some knowledge about operating systems and the underlying hardware, though I don't claim to be an "expert" by any means. Something I've found out is that the deeper you dig into learning about computers, the faster you realize that they are much more complex than you ever would have expected. It seems like there's always a deeper level to explore.

Anyways, first off, the System Idle Process (SIP) is NOT causing any of your "sluggish computer" problems, no matter what causal assumptions you're jumping to based on numbers you see in the Task Manager. As others have said, to put it simply, this is not a "working" process at all. It's just what its name implies: a process which occupies the CPU when the rest of the system is idle.

In the original post, look at the screenshot of the task manager. Are you looking at the column labeled "CPU" with the value 98 next to System Idle Process? It does not represent resource useage. That number represents the percentage of time the CPU is processing the SIP. The CPU and Memory are not the same thing - the CPU accesses memory to run programs. If you look to the right of the CPU column in the task manager, you'll see a column that says "Memory." This number is the actual memory useage of the process in kilobytes, and as you can see, the SIP uses the LEAST memory. It has the largest "CPU" value because the CPU spends that much time idle. The process is not stealing resources from any other processes though.

If you don't see a memory useage column in your own task manager, follow these steps: make sure you're viewing the Processes tab. Go up to the "View" menu at the top of the window, and click on Select Columns. The form which opens lists all the information you can choose to view in the process tab of the task manager. Click the check box next to "Memory Useage" if it's not already checked, and click OK. Now you'll see how much memory is used per process.

If you want to know even more about the running processes just go back into the Select Columns options and turn on more info. A guide to what each item is can be found here:
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/windows2000serv/reskit/prork/preb_mon_nbcl.mspx?mfr=true
Just scroll down to Table 27.5 for a list, and if you look below the table, there is also a lot of useful information about interpreting the "Performance" tab of the task manager. For those of you experiencing system lag and looking for an answer, I recommend visiting the above link. You'll learn what all the performance numbers actually mean, and then you can use it when you go take a look at your own performance information.

If you go to the processes tab and click directly on the Memory Useage column name, it puts the processes in order by amount of memory used, and you can easily see what is using the most memory. Now you may be tempted to start ending processes to regain memory, and you can do that, but I caution you: know what the process is before you end it! Otherwise, just leave it alone, because you may do more harm than good. For reference, this site lists the default processes (those you should leave alone) for Windows 2000:
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;Q263201&ID=Q263201
I run XP and the names are the same. Note that the explorer.exe process does not refer to Internet Explorer, as some think (IE is the iexplorer.exe process).

It's impossible to provide one solution that will magically cure everyone's lagging speed problems because there are so many different possible causes. If you don't do it already, make sure you do regular disk cleanups on your hard drive and defragment it often. The longer you wait between defrags, the longer it'll take to complete next time. This won't provide substantial speedup, but it does help.

If there are non-windows processes taking up a lot of memory, google search their name to find out what program is running them and whether or not you want to end them. Also, if you use a lot of instant messengers and things that start up automatically when you boot windows, it might be good to change your preferences in each program so that they don't. Then they won't be running in the background when you're not even using them.

When your computer does slow down and stops responding to your mouse clicks, the best thing to do is STOP clicking until it catches up. I saw somebody tell about how they'd click a bunch of times and then there would be a flurry of activity when the CPU finally caught up. Unless your mouse is malfunctioning, your clicks are being stored, and they will execute eventually. Continuing to click when nothing is happening just adds more inputs to the queue of tasks your computer is trying to get done, and makes it take longer.

So that's all I have for you. Examine your computer's performance numbers in the task manager and compare the physical memory and commit charge values (as explained at the website I linked to), and you may find that you simply need more memory. Or you may find malicious processes and discover that you have a virus, in which case you'll need to take steps to exterminate it.

Good luck.

well... system idle process means the CPU usage available to us... it's good if thats 95%...

95% system idle process = 95% CPU resources available...

What a hoot of a blog! A delight! Thank you.

Here's the rub - In Task Manager click the View tab, click Select Columns and then select: I/O Read & I/O Writes & I/O Other (sort by 'cpu' so that System Idle Process is at the top) and you will see there's nothin' happenin'.

pakx

Hi....

Found very much interesting.... the entire discussion.....

Did any body got success to resolve this problem..finally waht does it count is a LAG FREE system...

Would prefer if someone of you GURUS & GYANIS can send me an email on that krutaarth@hotmail.com

Thanks ........Chill

Krutarth

Another thing, I hope that you realize that when it says 98%, it means 98% of the 3% that you are using, lol.

I had this problem. I did a search and ended up here. What I can't believe is the post itself, and the number of profoundly ignorant people that would take issue with him, yet never answer his question.

I have no doubt that John Dvorak knows what the System Idle Process is. The question was "Doing what?" If the system is "idle", why is it completely unresponsive for a period of five minutes to half an hour?

If you're such a "genius" -- you're going to explain to John Dvorak what the System Idle Process is -- how is it that you completely miss the point? And why don't you answer his question?

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I realized what the system idle process 'was' only didn't understand 'why' it seemed to just start happening, and 'why' my system seemed to pick times I was busy to decide to go idle. I know just a little about computers. I stole my first one which was an 8-bit monochrome antique way back when IBM (16 bit)and the company who made that piece o' crap were fighting for dominion. I taught myself how to use it by hit and miss (I stole all the floppies too). I studied computer programming in prison, but since my hobbies included drugs, extortion, and killing, I had just barely passed the algebra part and was starting to learn language (Cobalt, FORTRAN, Lotus 123, etc. for the one who aren't old as hell) but kept getting put in Super Max for murder investigations and weapons busts. When I got out I got a Commodore 64 when they was 'the s***'. Anyways, I tried to complete my computer 'book learning' around 2004 when, at 50 years old, I started going to NMSU. Well, long story short I went to NMSU and got my micro-processor cert and took PC Maintenance and repair but still feel like I know nothing.

Now to the present. Right now I'm off the grid, so to speak. Let's put it this way, sometimes it's not nice to be 'wanted'. I got no income and I live as a hermit with only a few knowing where I live and less knowing who I am or my real name and I build my stuff from old parts that others give me. This one I'm using now I built. It started with a 750MGz Pent II and I scored a motherboard with a 1GHz AMD and a couple of RAM sticks but I built three from the pile of junk I got. So, I only got 368MB of RAM. This is my Frankenstein cause every part of it came from different hosts. My situation doesn't allow for many hardware upgrades although I put in a 80GB HD and a 20GB slave and scored a DVD/CD-RW.

Now to the point, I just wanted to give history so you know my sources and limitations and can understand why all the dissing caused me to give up half-way through and just scan for info for the rest of it. What I'm trying to find is 'causes', not hear belittling from punks that wouldn't stand a chance in prison or perhaps real life. My systems run fairly well and were amazingly fast on first builds but I rely heavily on free software. I always research any before installing but... I discovered that my 'upgraded' AVG (Anti-Virus Guard (a heretofore great freeware), was having a conflict with my WinPatrol. So I killed the WP. The old version of AVG had no problem so I got no clue. The advice on killing the Auto updates sounds, sound, so I'll give it a try. What seems to be a clue is the system going idle and freezing up seemed to occur just after I installed Updates. I'm running XP, from a disk I snagged from a laptop, with SP2 and SP3. I've used this disk on several computers I made with no problems but one of these last auto updates seemed to cause the problem. I have no advice on the problem but I do on people's attitudes on here. Many have a true concern for "Why", not if their question is stupid or not. I have an IQ of about 150 and I don't have the answer, because I never gained the knowledge but that's why I ended up at this site, searching for it. I solve most of my problems by hit and miss because I hate know-it-alls who really are all talk, always trying to seem superior. I can ask you questions in fields I excel in and make you look stupid too, because knowledge is acquired mostly from necessity and, since we live in a Google world, we don't worry about reading books or go trying something we shouldn't because we can ask someone who's already acquired that knowledge. So, I'm gonna try the only seemingly viable action that this whole long a** forum sprouted and turn off my auto updates. To those who asked questions I applaud you on your thirst for knowledge. For those of you who answered with smart a** put downs. Just remember 'What goes around, comes around, and one day you're gonna need help and will be just ridiculed and left to perish.

Phoenixovid

I got fooled by this, I came hear searching system idle process. I think my computer has other problems, but I noticed this was using a lot of the CPU while it is running slow, but I now see that even when it is running great, that number still seems high in system idle process.

FFS ppl...

if system idle process is less than like 70 ur pc will lagg like hell.
but when its 90 or over, ur pc runs smooth like hell :-]

(if u got XP)

Thank you Andy G! After spending 2 weeks checking for viruses and spyware and trojans and bad drivers I read Andy's solution. It worked!
I am reprinting his solution so you do not have to look it up again:
If you are having a problem with idle system idle taking all of your cpu speed and/or hardware interruptions, it is most likely from an accidental switch by your computer of IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers to PIO mode when they are supposed to be in DMA mode. To fix this, go to the control panel, open system, select hardware/select device manager, then click to expand IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers. Right click to select properties of the Primary and/or Secondary IDE Channel. Go to Advanced Settings to make sure the current transfer mode is DMA mode. If you see PIO mode anywhere in the current transfer mode or transfer mode, you will have to uninstall the driver. To do so, you need to be in the Primary or secondary IDE properties menu, then select driver, then uninstall. After uninstalling, restart the computer. When you restart, Windows XP will automatically find the driver for both the primary and secondary IDE channels. You will then have to restart and the problem should be fixed. I am not sure if this works with Vista or any other Windows versions besides XP.

Ok i had the same problem for months - every time i booted up the pc would go idle for 1-5 minutes, 0-5% pc usage and system idle at 99.

I ran msconfig ans services.msc and literally unticked almost everything one by one until i finally found the solution.

In my case it was a program running under services called workstation - i disabled this and now my pc starts in seconds.

I hope this works for other people - if not i suggest doing what i did - the good old trial and error method and post your results here.

Thank you Andy G, also. (I fully agree with Mike P)
It's the IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers and the "PIO settings".
I followed Andy G. recommended solution, and it worked.

First, I suggest grabbing Sysinternals Process Explorer. You can find it, along with the rest of the Sysinternals suite here:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/default.aspx

I have done the same things as suggested by Andy G. In summary, I have reset my dma as per the suggestion here:
http://winhlp.com/node/10

I have also discovered that there are problems in the Windows Automatic Updates which have a few makeshift remedies here:
http://www.microsoft.com/communities/newsgroups/en-us/default.aspx?dg=microsoft.public.windowsupdate&tid=507fdfc2-c65b-4d88-bdee-9dc79a8e975f&p=1

Note: The batch file was the only thing I needed to run, as I already had both the update agent as well as the KB927891 update installed. However, I also defragged datastore.edb (explained below). Be sure to read the discussion following the main post in the above link - there are several various options presented. One post of particular interest is duplicated here:

//Begin Quote//

MowGreen [MVP] 5/21/2007 2:05 PM PST

The update history viewable on MU/WU is stored in DataStore.edb which
can become corrupted/fragmented due to scanning by antivirus software.
There is another update history stored in ReportingEvents.log located in
%windir%\SoftwareDistribution.

The detection scan hits DataStore.edb causing a buffer overflow.
One can run esentutl from a Command Prompt to defragment DataStore.edb
instead of deleting it in hopes that will resolve the issue -

esentutl /d %windir%\SoftwareDistribution\Datastore\datastore.edb

If that doesn't resolve the issue, attempt to Recover the file -

esentutl /r %windir%\SoftwareDistribution\Datastore\datastore.edb

[This command performs recovery, bringing all databases to a
consistent state]

The next to last resort is to attempt to Repair it -

esentutl /p %windir%\SoftwareDistribution\Datastore\datastore.edb

NOTE: MS recommends that if the system is imaged regularly that a new
system image be done after running ANY of the above operations

* On XP Home Edition, one must stop the Automatic Updates service PRIOR
to running the above. This wasn't the case when doing so on XP Pro *

The *last resort* is to delete DataStore.edb

To mitigate log/database corruption, MS suggests this:

Virus scanning recommendations for computers that are running Windows
Server 2003, Windows 2000, or Windows XP
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/822158
Last Review :October 30, 2006

For computers that are running Windows Server 2003, Windows 2000, or
Windows XP

Do not scan the following files and folders. These files are not at risk
of infection. If you scan these files, serious performance problems may
occur because of file locking.
Where a specific set of files is identified by name, exclude only
those files instead of the whole folder. Sometimes, the whole folder
must be excluded. Do not exclude any one of these based on the file name
extension. For example, do not exclude all files that have a .dit
extension. Microsoft has no control over other files that may use the
same extensions as the following files.

• Microsoft Windows Update or Automatic Update related files
• The Windows Update or Automatic Update database file. This file
is located in the following folder:
%windir%\SoftwareDistribution\Datastore

Exclude the Datastore.edb file.

• The transaction log files. These files are located in the
following folder:
%windir%\SoftwareDistribution\Datastore\Logs
Exclude the following files:
• Edb*.log

Note The wildcard character indicates that there may be several files.
• Res1.log
• Res2.log
• Edb.chk
• Tmp.edb

//End Quote//

If none of these solutions provide a happy ending, check your CMOS battery (located on the motherboard). A dying CMOS battery typically has other symptoms, such as the system clock losing time, but I have noticed that as long as I am connected to the net my system clock updates automatically. This makes diagnosis a little more difficult. You can try disconnecting from the web for 24+ hours and see if your system clock loses time. Or you can just pony up the $4 for a new battery.

That's everything that I have found. My problem is solved, and I hope this benefits others as well. Good luck! If you have any questions, I have provided my myspace account - feel free to send me a message there (please include a reference, preferably a link, so I know how you found me).

~Ian (The original FallenZen)

Andy G, your solution worked like a charm dude! You ROCK!

Andy G, your solution to this problem worked like a c-h-a-r-m dude! you ROCK!

Disabling auto updates and indexing seems to have worked. Good luck!

I understand the inverse relationship between SIP and busy system.....so I'm okay on that. THANK YOU to those who gave some ideas regarding possible problems and fixes. Those who poked fun at the questions were just showing off. Either way, I read this entire blog and found some good ideas, so it was helpful, although painful. Here's hoping we all find our specific problem, fix it, and get back to normal. Thanks.

I have a questions... the SIP is running 95% however, I am also attemping to run the internet (and failing as it takes about ten minutes to load this page so expect the comment in the distant future) BUT the idle process is hogging up my CPU and the intetnet is running at either 01% or 00%.
help me stop this mr computer god!

Well what the hell? Mine does this crap WHILE I'M WORKING. If I'm doing something major, the damn thing starts up and slow the **** out of my computer.

Who the fuck wrote this piece of shit mother fucking god damn cock sucking article... IT EXPLAINS SHIT ABOUT IT!!!!!!!

One would think that the lot of you, over the course of several years would have came to some kind of solution. I'm running a brand new quad-core AMD 9600 running at 2.3 ghz, 4 gigs of Corsair XMS2 RAM, a 7200 rpm 750 GB HD, with dedicated 512mb DDR3 Nvidia BFG 9800GT PCI Express 2.0 Graphics. All that with the new Windows 7. (Ive been beta testing the RC since the initial release) Ive found it to be visually stunning, at the same time though it runs great. Ofcourse,

I am a power user, so i like to have alot of bang. Since this problem started, Ive noticed substantial increase in temperatures. CPU, RAM, N, Bridge, S. Bridge all running close to 140` F or close to 60` C

My CPU is running at 95% currently. 24k memory only. 0 bytes read, 0 bytes write, commit size 0 bytes, 0 page faults, 0 handles, 4 threads, 0 I/O reads, 0 I/O Writes.
Anyone would see the problem in that. Ive currently got 1 or 2 processes running at 100,000_ I/O writes and several running at 800,000+ I/O Reads. If i shut them down, the CPU still is being swallowed up the idle process. Oh and whats better. System Idle Process has no valid Image Path to show. As is, Task manager says it will take the cpu over 17 hours and climbing at a 4x 1 second multiplier. What does this tell you? I have class in a few hours and i know my Prof. will most likely look at me and smile and say your IT tech, Figure it out, OR it will start another one of his "Linux Power" lectures.

With this problem happening on, a multitude of different OS's produced by the "Gates". Maybe we should take all our combined knowledge (which isnt helping us here) and make Linux more user friendly, more visually inclined and less Apple-ish and do away with the gates. I will find a solution, even if it is ditching Windows, Hell maybe Doors are better.