Task Manager puzzle

[The Old Timer]

I noticed that my machine was very slow & sluggish & I had to wait several
seconds to be able to open a simple file. I went to task manager & sorted
CPU usage & found that Windows Media Player had was displayed as 98%. This I
found to most unusual especially since I didn't even have Media Player shown
on the taskbar as open & running & can't imagine ever having any media files
that would consume so much usage.

I then shut down Media Player & conned working. A while latter I decided to
have another look at Task Manager when I only had Outlook Express open.
This time it tell me that System Idle Process is at 99%. I'm using XP pro
with SP2 installed. I have all of Norton's Antivirus installed & up to date
& even did a full system scan & nothing was reported. The latest version
of Spybot reports no spyware.
Any ideas as to what's going on?

 

[Rich Barry]

Hi Old Timer, System Idle Process at 99% is Normal. When was the last time
you did a good cleaning of your system.
Defrag etc.

 

[David Candy]

System Idle is 100% - All Processes%

IE It tells you how much is unused. If 99% then you are only using 1%. The computer needs to do something when it's got nothing to do. So it calculates how much of itself is free.