What is the "System" task that is listed in Windows Task Manager?

  • Thread starter Thread starter bjc
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bjc

When I open up the Task manager, there is a process
called "System" that is running. It is owned by
user "SYSTEM" and seems to always have a PID of 4. What
is this process? I've tried looking at it using SysMon
but it appears to not be a real process.

This "System" process chews up a lot of CPU cycles and
has been causing some severe performance issues on my
machine.

Thanks.
 
bjc said:
When I open up the Task manager, there is a process
called "System" that is running. It is owned by
user "SYSTEM" and seems to always have a PID of 4. What
is this process? I've tried looking at it using SysMon
but it appears to not be a real process.

This "System" process chews up a lot of CPU cycles and
has been causing some severe performance issues on my
machine.
Click to expand...

I think that you mean "System Idle Process" and this is exactly what
the name says: the unused CPU cycles.
 
-----Original Message-----


I think that you mean "System Idle Process" and this is exactly what
the name says: the unused CPU cycles.
Click to expand...

No. I see the System Idle Process in the list as well as
my mysterious "System" process. Just like the "System
Idle Process" is not a real process, I suspect this other
process is not real either. Still this process regularly
takes more than 50% of my CPU cycles. Does anyone have
any clue how I can tell what this process is doing?

BJC
 
That, basically, is the system itself. Try Process Explorer from
http://www.sysinternals.com. That will not tell you what the issue is
however. What you're seeing now is the system reacting to either faulting
hardware or an application gone nuts. The latter could be malware or
spyware.

--
Walter Clayton - MS MVP(WinXP)
Associate Expert
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/expertzone
Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced.
http://www.dts-l.org
 
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