System Idle Process using all my CPU

[jedibond]

For the last week or so my System Idle Process has been running more or less all the time. It varies between 60-95% and is seriously slowing down my PC. It only seems to run when I'm on the net, I've virus checked my PC twice but nothing comes up, I'm running XP home on SP2.

 

Not sure if I should terminate it in Task Manager, thought I'd better ask first

 

Anyone got any ideas ?

 

PS - It's taken me 5 minutes to write this out !

[Elton]

I think you'll find that the higher that figure, the better. It means that 60-95% of your CPU is idle.

[jedibond]

Usually I'd agree with you Elton but it's doing it while I'm in the middle of doing things, surely if it's an idle process, it shouldn't be working while I'm doing something ???

[medwaygreen]

I think that those figures you see are correct as what you are doing will only use a small proportion of your System ie say 5% leaving the 95% idle,Its when you have something taking up 95% of your system that you'll have a speed problem.

[jimpy0]

try using another virus scanner plenty of freely available ones i use AVG no one viri killer gets them all

then do a system clean up using xp in house and also another freely avail download "clean up" once you are 1000% sure system is clean if its still causing probs then u need to look elsewhere onboard

[kempo]

For the last week or so my System Idle Process has been running more or less all the time. It varies between 60-95% and is seriously slowing down my PC. It only seems to run when I'm on the net, I've virus checked my PC twice but nothing comes up, I'm running XP home on SP2.

 

Not sure if I should terminate it in Task Manager, thought I'd better ask first

 

Anyone got any ideas ?

 

PS - It's taken me 5 minutes to write this out !

 

 

as i type this my system idle is ranging between 85 to 95 so i would say that this is the norm.

look at other devices hogging resources.

[corydoras]

Usually I'd agree with you Elton but it's doing it while I'm in the middle of doing things, surely if it's an idle process, it shouldn't be working while I'm doing something ???

The Idle Process is normal and it is part of the Operating System. It always runs with a PID (Process ID) of zero and it cannot be killed.

 

Since most of the time your CPU is busy doing nothing it is normal for the Idle Process to have a high CPU utilisation, even when you think that your PC is working quite hard.

 

Your problem is most likely caused by some virus or other malware

[Guest sandpipper]

Wrong post sorry

Edited July 26, 2006 by sandpipper

[Si...]

Everyone else is right, the system idle process is nothing to worry about, its totally normal for it to be up around 75-99% when the pc is idle or not using a lot of cpu cycles.

 

 

If your PC is slow or non-responsive then I`d suggest looking at things that are using a lot of memory, these don`t necessarily use a lot of cpu, but if they use the memory then it`ll slow down your pc bigtime

[kempo]

Everyone else is right, the system idle process is nothing to worry about, its totally normal for it to be up around 75-99% when the pc is idle or not using a lot of cpu cycles.

 

 

If your PC is slow or non-responsive then I`d suggest looking at things that are using a lot of memory, these don`t necessarily use a lot of cpu, but if they use the memory then it`ll slow down your pc bigtime

 

 

on that note, just how much ram has your pc got as windows xp is a real demanding operating system, so you might be accessing your virtual memory which is a partition of your hard drive and a fraction of the speed of your ram.