T&L Publications

why is the system idle process always almost pegged so high ? in the high 90's
the cpu usage is low.. but the memory usage is almost maxed out..

any ideas ? win XP is used.. approx 1 gig memory

and on another machine the memory usage can be low and the cpu is bout maxed out.

but mainly i do not understand why the system idle is always maxed out on both systems..nothing else is showing such high usage. most other task run 10-20%

system idle process, it's just there to give the user/system a view over the full 100% of the cpu usage, if you dont really have anything running, what is left gets dumpped into system idle process. It's useful sometimes because of all of the other processes taking up a bit, and it's a bit scattered, so it's there to show what is left not being used up. It makes it easier to see how much is being used up rather than using the tab that shows the graphs, since processing the tabs and such actually takes up a few more processor cycles to do rather than just displaying text of the task manager's processes tab.

Lets say that your trying to figure out how much of the processor isnt being used, and you have 3 or 4 programs using up 3-4% of the processor, and it varies every half a second or so, rather than trying to add all of the %'s up, and subtract it from 100%, or trying to switch to the graphs tab, which would give inacurate readings anyhow due to needing more CPU/memory for processing the graphs, it would be much easier to just look at system idle process and see how much is free.

It's nothing to be worried about, it's just a visual thing for people to see what precentage isnt being used up.

hope this explains what your curious about, and the reason PCs have different memory usage is what is running on them at the time, there's background services and programs, user programs, everything else that collects on a system over time, so that's why the memory usage is different.

oh, ok, thanks,, i thought idle process was hogging it all...

Hey Dac,

The system that is XP with only 1 Gig is probably rather slow, am I right?

Run the "msconfig" and look at what all services are running in the background.

Make a list of them, and see what they are.
A lot of the services aren't really needed, and can be a drag on the system.

But if you have already "trimmed out the fat" as it were.
Then plug in another couple of 1 Gig memory sticks into the computer,
bring it up to 4 Gig.

But check your Motherboard first, and see if it can handle more memory.
If it can't, then it now maybe the time too look into replacing it.
Support for XP is ending in 2014.
So making the move to Win 7 and a new machine now may not be a bad idea.


Signed: Janitor Tzap

my main machine is a laptop..not able to upgrade it much.

other computer is at work..it is sooo slow IT here is a fat joke.. the internet here is fiber connected, but yet internet is as slow as dial up...


just when i get used to a system, they discontinue it.. Ughhhh