97% 'System Idle Process' CPU usage


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So, I noticed my PC being really sluggish the other day, and I mean REALLY sluggish. I checked for virus scans, updates etc.. nothing. So I opened up taskman and at the very bottom is 'System Idle Process', it was at a steady 99% CPU usage. So, I rebooted, but still the same problem.

Back to today, as I type this, I don't notice any performance degrading except for the odd iTunes song playing 'choppy', but the System Idle is still at 97% but ever-changing down to say 60% then going steady back up, then dropping again.

Any ideas? Screenshot attached.

As you can see by the commit charge, I have WELL enough RAM.

post-176093-1163521295_thumb.jpg

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If you mean that it has choppy performance even though System Idle is at 97% then it is one of your other processes doing that. Seeing that you have 38 processes running I would say that one of them is spiking and using a lot of the CPU. I would start by closing as many of those processes as possible without stopping system critical ones and start them back up one by one to get an idea of whats going on.

I recently had a very similar problem. Turned out that one of F-Secures processes was spiking to between 30% and 70% about once every 10 seconds. Uninstalled F-Secure (was a freebie anyway), replaced it with AVG Free and problem solved. Took some time to troubleshoot it and be sure though.

Reboot first, and do not start anything that doesn't start automatically! Then look at the processes and sort by CPU Usage. If nothing appears after 2 or 3 minutes (and things have settled down), start up programs you use regularly or are normally open all the time (IM Clients, media player, etc). See if something happens. Don't try and rush as programs WILL spike occasionally as needed. The culprit will most likely do the same regularly, ie: spikes to 100% once every 10 seconds. The culprit will not spike to 100% once and disappear.

Eventually the process should show itself at the top of the list. When you identified it, reboot and check again to see if it is a one-off or indeed the culprit. And then once more for good measure. Don't want to troubleshoot the problems ! When you've found out the process, google it and you should get a result telling you what it is and what it does. You may even (like me) get thousands of results from people with the same problem and maybe, if your lucky (I wasn't), a fix.

Edited by Fourjays
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