System Idle Process and disk thrashing

[srtriano]

I have a Pentium II 350 (home built) with 384 MB Ram, 30
GB on THREE SCSI Hard Drives (15 GB free total, and no
dive with less than 20% free), and Riva TNT video (16 MB)
running Windows XP Home. My swapfile is set to a fixed
size of 1 GB on E Drive (a big, fast SCSI drive with lots
of free space).

It's getting old (and a 16 MB video card is a bit pathetic
these days), but seems far too slow even for it's age. I
frequently hear the disk thrashing which causes severe
slowdowns. When I use Ctrl+Alt+Del to call up the task
manager, I verify that no programs are running, and no
unusual processes. When I do this, I find that the "System
Idle Process" is using 60 to 90% of the CPU cycles!

I have up-to-date antivirus, I frequently scan for
Adware/Malware, I defragment regularly, and I don't run
excessive items in the taskbar (Norton Antivirus, Norton
Internet Security, Cookie Pal, clock and volume.

Any idea why the System Idle Process would be using so
much of the CPU and my disk thrashing incessantly? Could
the 16 MB video card be the culprit?

 

[Phydeaux]

System Idle is when the CPU is idle! That is, it doing nothing. If it
shows 60% idle then look at what is using 40%.

 

[Jupiter Jones [MVP]]

System Idle Process is exactly what it sounds like.
It is the % of processing power you have waiting for something to do,
doing nothing.

If you are having problems, this is not the cause.
Follow this link:
http://www3.telus.net/dandemar/slowcom.htm