system idle process

[Renegade]

what exactly is running when this is taking up 99% of CPU and running the drive?
And why?
Can it be turned off?
Thanks.

[bailey]

do a alt-cont-delete and see what all is running

if your useing xp then there can be a lot of thing running

don't worry about it though as xp does do a very efficant job controlling things

creating a restore point is one you want to keep running

[lil Jimmie]

If your "system idle process" is high don't worry about it, that is what you want it to be. That means very little is going on and your system is at 99% idle.

From BlackViper's web site:
System IDLE Process: This is a generic process that is used when no other program or process is requiring CPU resources. It is not a bad thing if it is using 99% of your CPU! This process is a 16 k loop that the CPU processes while it is not doing “anything” else. If you computer is called upon to do any other task than nothing, the idle process allows that to happen and the % used will decrease accordingly. You can not disable the idle process. If it is using 97% CPU, which only means that the other 3% is used by real programs. If your idle process is constantly at a low rate (for example, 3%) something else, an application or process is using the CPU.