System Ideal Process

mr_ganja · Nov 22, 2007

Everytime I boot my PC it takes a long time to load up the desktop, and after I get there I open my task manager and the system idle process is always taking up 90-99% of the CPU, but the CPU usage stays around 0-15% all the time.

Running Windows XP pro SP2♠

what in the world is going on?

bing · Nov 22, 2007

Its normal.

mr_ganja · Nov 22, 2007

its normal for it to stay like that no matter how long I have my PC on?

bing · Nov 22, 2007

Yes, it means it is the "system idle process" part is showing that your CPU is "IDLING", hence the CPU is doing nothing, hence low CPU utilisation.

No intention to be rude, just curious, is this your 1st XP installation ?

bchur83 · Nov 22, 2007

System Idle Process is a catch all for unused CPU Cycles. It doesnt put a load on the system, and is completely normal. Your problem is that you have so much running, 57 processes. Startup MSCONFIG and remove some of the startup items that you dont need. Get that down to under 40, or better yet, 30.

mr_ganja · Nov 22, 2007

I've had several XP installs and I just never usually noticed this before until now.

RJARRRPCGP · Nov 25, 2007

"This behavior is by design." As Microsoft would say. (or similar)

trowakage · Nov 25, 2007

Even if you yourself aren't doing anything with your computer, there's still a lot of background things that XP is doing (maintaining the network connections, that sort of thing), so your processor will never be perfectly idle.

Secondly, the discrepancy is probably due to the readouts not being synchronized, as calculations such as unused CPU cycles are rarely accurate.

System Ideal Process

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