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.
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 140F 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.
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?
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.
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
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.
Andy G, your solution worked like a charm dude! You ROCK!
Simple solution: make the Idle Process non viewable.
I don’t know about Mac, but even though every OS has such a process, I would think most *nix OS’s don’t show you.
In TOP, for example, it has a row at the top, that says:
“95.3 id”
I’d rather have the more cryptic abbreviation than having to deal with an idle process that the OS is dumb enough to show me.
Thanks genius.
There is something naively strange about this exchange, beyond misunderstanding the “idle process”. No one looks at the task manager without expecting that something should be happening that is not. If a virus scanner is running, or a virus or anything else THAT <\i> is a process that should show up taking cycles on your machine. If there is a programmatic way to hide that, or assign those cycles to the idle process there is a massive Windows design fail (surprise).
Alternatively, and undiscussed, is that any process may go inactive if it is waiting on a resource - the network, hard drive other serial or wireless communication, or even the retrace on a display. The terrible gap in my tools is a direct way to identify where that bottleneck is: is there a process conflict that additional cores or alternate memory management would clear? Would $25 in my display adapter triple the “snappiness” of my machine by better using the available cycles?
If I have a running program using 4% of the CPU and task manager shows 95% idle, I want to know what component is preventing my program from completing in 1/21 the time. Large idle time means that some other bit of my system is sluggish. Which bit?
thank you … you explained why computers are not choking on idle process. however, so many questions want to know why computers are choking when only idle process is running in their task manager. Its really no help at all.