'System Idle Process'

[Matt]

Hello, this has been a question of mine for a while now, and I hope you guys can shine some light on it.

I've noticed that when I return to my computer after some period of time (e.g. 30 mins), I notice it is clicking away for no reason. XP turns the screen off, whilst it is doing this (don't ask me why, i've tried changing the power settings, etc, but i've had no success). Anyway, whenever i move the mouse, the 'clicking' stops right away. I decided to do CTRL+ALT+DEL to see what processes were occurring. I noticed down the bottom something called 'System Idle Process' was running. So, just a couple of questions really: Does anyone know what this is? the purpose behind it? you get the idea. I just can't help to get a little suspicious as to why my computer should be working away when i've got no programs running, and when there has been no mouse or keyboard activity after a certain period of time.

I hope someone can throw some light on this.

TIA.
Matt.

[Calum]

Sounds like you need to upgrade your operating system by downloading and installing the latest service pack for Microsoft windows xp. It can be found here.

If you can't be bothered doing that (i strongly recommend it though, if you don't continually upgrade windows there's no telling what sort of security/stability problems you might have), then have a look in "Control Panel -> Power Options" for a solution...

[Matt]

Thanks Calum, but I haven't really got time to download mandrake on my 56kb/s modem!

[Calum]

well, in that case, did you get it sorted from yr control panel? sorry, i have no XP knowledge, just what i know from other windows 'operating systems'.

[Matt]

Yes, I think I have. Sorry for moaning on here, I guess it probably can get quite annoying for you guys. And yes, one day, I will get linux, but not quite yet.

[voidmain]

Yeah, that "System Idle Process" is a nasty virus. You need to kill that bugger off. At least make it so it doesn't use up all that processor time. You can accomplish this by running any high res video file through Windows Media Player.

[iancom]

Matt,

Hopefully should shed some light on this... I don't have specific knowledge of XP, but Windows tends to behave in similar ways on most versions.

I would suspect that the _disk_ activity you're noticing during idle periods is something along the lines of Office FindFast indexing your hard disk, or the operating system re-arranging some of its components, supposedly to make them start up faster. Neither actually work in my experience, and in the case of the former you'll find it much more reliable to just disable it completely (remove FindFast from your startup folder and delete its indices from start-setting-control panel-findfast).

Most operating systems have tasks that run in idle periods, and it could be anything really, probably not anything to worry about (running Windows XP in itself is probably giving you enough to worry about already).

The "System Idle Process" that you asked about is perfectly normal - for all operating systems as far as I'm aware - although some don't explicitly list it in the task list. Basically it is exactly what it says, a system process that takes the idle processor cycles. You should find that System Idle Process % plus CPU usage % adds up to 100% (or thereabouts, due to rounding!).

Hope this answers some question, and I hope you'll have a go at a Linux distribution soon...!

[Master of Reality]

i've never seen the system idle processes actually show up, saying "system idle process". Usually it shows the actual process names.

[Matt]

Thanks for your feedback. I trust on what you said that these processes are normal for all OS's.

I opened up FindFast, and got a load of corrupt file rubbish. I also noticed that after 20 minutes of the system being idle, this 'system idle process' was still in the process list, and was on about 85. Geez, I guess I'm not talking sense here...but i hope you understand.

I've got a screen shot at this link:
 http://mops.netfirms.com/Images/scr_1.JPG

(X11: You posted an image on the bored, so i linked it...)

[ April 25, 2002: Message edited by: X11 ]

[Calum]

seriously, you want to uninstall findfast immediately, from the "add/Remove Programs" control panel. You will never meet anybody who can give you a reason why it should be there. It installs automatically when you install M$ office, but can be disabled at installtime if you go through each component individually.

Anyway, findfast is a handy little utility for slowing down your CPU and occasionally crashing your OS. It needs to be uninstalled as soon as possible.

[iancom]

Really, the System Idle Process is nothing at all to worry about - it's completely normal in Windows. Here's a screenshot of my Windows 2000 Task List

Notice that the System Idle Process is taking up most of my CPU time (because the CPU is doing nothing else - it can't do NOTHING, so it has to run an idle process). It also has a PID (process ID) of 0, so you know it really is the genuine thing.

To contrast, here is a shot of my
Linux Top Command
Notice that this does not actually list the idle process in with the other tasks, but it is still there - near the top and to the right "99.2% idle".

So, don't worry about the System Idle process but do uninstall FindFast!

[ April 25, 2002: Message edited by: IanC ]

[Calum]

what do you mean it can't do nothing? what happens when you select "idle process" and click the button to exit the process? is it a process or not? if not, it should not be on the process list.

[iancom]

I did try killing it for a laugh... wouldn't let me :-(

Of course the processor *can* do nothing, but operating systems tend to work on the principle that the processor is always doing something and treat idle time as a process in itself. I don't know enough about the really deep inner workings of kernels and so on to explain exactly why they do this... it's something to do with the bus having to deliver signals to the processor whether there's anything in the work queue or not so the OS generates an idle (blank) work packet to be sent.

Or something like that!

[iancom]

This has got me intruiged now, so if anyone's interested this is how the Linux kernel deals with the idle process...

Code: [Select]

Basically it's a very minimal process whose only function is to check if anything else wants to use the processor and if it does, give way to it, otherwise keep looping...

If you think about it, the processor could never be doing nothing otherwise there would be no mechanism to fork another process on demand. Fascinating