BleepingComputer.com: System Idle Process

The CPU is constantly running at capacity due to the "system idle process" using it up. I don't know how to resolve this issue. Virus and spyware from Zone Alarm have not found anything. I do not know file extensions well enough to remove unused files. Searching the internet for each extension is a pain and not always helpful.

Any suggestions? If this was a previous post, I wasn't savvy enough to locate it and apologize.

system idle at 99% is good, that how much of your cpu is available to use, it's not in use

See, I told you I didn't know anything. I guess maybe I did take care of some of the earlier problems, because it once was "iexplore" I believe that held it up and froze up the computer. Thanks for your clarification.

Cheryl- I think you will find free Process Explorer very helpful. You can read my explanation of it here: http://www.5starsupport.com/ipboard/index.php?showtopic=8275

Cheryl, if it makes you feel better, many people get confused that when System Idle Proccess is using a high amount of CPU usage, they think there is somethign wrong and that thsi isn't normal but it actually is. Hey, even I thought the same thing but ahwell we learn something new everyday don't we haha.

Thank you all for your replies. I had spent days trying to find answers to what was a simple question, and within minutes had my answer here. It's very exciting to finally get answers so my questions when they arise--without spending endless time surfing the net.

DaChew, on Dec 14 2007, 11:38 AM, said:

Not when your total CPU usage is at 100%. Several processes use the system idle process. Get TCPview from support.microsoft.com/systernals and you will be able to see what is using this.

I was getting high CPU usage and Process explorer was showing that “system idle processes” was taking up 98% of the cpu time.

I used TCPview & you can see what processes are using that process and end them. They were mostly just web ads and network domain connections that just came back after ending. One thing that uses system idle processes is windows updates, so if you can, turn off automatic updates. You may also want to turn of automatic system restore, and delete files in the Temp, downloaded files, downloded programs folders and any such temporary folders.

So, I did a google search and did 3 things. Now I have a bunch of stuff loaded on my laptop and cpu usage is at 0%. The problem still comes back once in awhile, when using Office 2007, so I am looking into that, but my overall cpu usage is much lower now.

This is what I did:

1) The right click visual effect can kick off the high cpu usage. Follow the steps in this picture:



2) Saved the following to a batch file and ran it (this will re-register files that are used by automatic updates):

Net stop wuauserv
Net stop bits
Net stop cryptsvc
regsvr32 %windir%\system32\atl.dll /s
regsvr32 %windir%\system32\jscript.dll /s
regsvr32 %windir%\system32\msxml3.dll /s
regsvr32 %windir%\system32\softpub.dll /s
regsvr32 %windir%\system32\wuapi.dll /s
regsvr32 %windir%\system32\wuaueng.dll /s
regsvr32 %windir%\system32\wuaueng1.dll /s
regsvr32 %windir%\system32\wucltui.dll /s
regsvr32 %windir%\system32\wups.dll /s
regsvr32 %windir%\system32\wuweb.dll /s
regsvr32 %windir%\system32\wuauserv.dll /s
regsvr32 %windir%\system32\wupdmgr.exe /s
regsvr32 %windir%\system32\wups2.dll /s

3) Rebooted.

I found another major cause for high cpu usage. I did this by watching tcpview and finding something using system idle processes during high cpu usage. The thing that was doing this was as follows:

wwwbaytest1.microsoft.com

I was curious, so I entered http://wwwbaytest1.microsoft.com in my web browser and I was surprised at what I found!



To remedy this, I entered the following line in my c:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts and lmhosts and lmhosts.sam files:

127.0.0.1 wwwbaytest1.microsoft.com

Now I have been running databases and database imports on my workstation for the last 36 hours and without any high cpu usage at all.

In general, System Idle Process being high is a good thing - when no other problems are presenting themselves.

It's sorta like high blood pressure. You're not supposed to have high blood pressure - but if you're about to be eaten by a monster, it's probably OK to have high blood pressure.

Basically, the System Idle Process counts the stuff that isn't accounted for in the other processes. From my reading, this is mostly DPC and Interrupt processing (if you're using Process Explorer, you'll see DPC and Interrupts listed as processes - but they really aren't processes - but are just included for convenience). A decent article on it is here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/System_idle_process More detailed information is available in Windows Internals, 4th Edition, page 348 (I'm currently reading this).

I'm not real happy with the description in either reference tho' - because they don't include enough detail to explain the "why" of your situation.

usasma, on Apr 5 2008, 08:36 AM, said:

The problem with Microsoft's design is that anything without a specific thread is thrown into system idle processes. What ends up happening is that programmers that don't want you to easily discover what they are doing will just program their app without a specific thread, including Microsoft's own programmers.