What's in System Idle Process?

P

Paul Pedersen

My computer occasionally bogs down terribly for almost up to a minute.
Sometimes there's a lot of disk thrashing, and sometimes not.

I have 1GB of ram. Virtual memory is 1.5GB. There's more than 40GB free disk
space. The disk has been checked for errors and recently defragmented. I
keep the registry cleaned with Ace Utilities.

Calling up the Task Manager (which is difficult to do, because the system is
so slow), I can see that nothing is using any significant processor time
except "System Idle Process", which remains at 95%+. Page file usage is
around 25% or less.

I have the indexing service turned on, but that is supposed to remain idle
while I'm working.

Clearly, something is going on in System Idle Process, probably a lot of
things. But what might be causing this problem?
 
J

JS

You need to find the specific process or application that's taking all
the CPU resources and slowing down your PC during that minute when the
slowdown happens.

To do this try Process Explorer:
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/sysinternals/SystemInformation/ProcessExplorer.mspx

Once you have Process Explorer installed and running:
In the taskbar select View and check 'Show Process Tree' and 'Show Lower
Pane' options.
(This will provide the detailed info you need)
Next click on the CPU column to sort processes by %CPU usage.
Then click on the process that's using most or all the CPU %,
once it's highlighted, right click and from the options listed select:
Search Online
This should display what out there on the web about that process.

Note: some entries like Explorer and svchost may need to be expanded to show
the detail,
(sub processes), in this case click on the + located to the left of the
entry.

JS
 
P

Paul Pedersen

Thanks.

I did that. It shows System Idle Process bouncing around between 93-98%,
which sounds good. Yet the disk is thrashing away, and response is slow.
Whatever is causing it doesn't seem to show up.

I've heard of malware that can do that, run while hiding itself. But I have
up to date NOD32, so that possibility seems unlikely.

Anything else?
 
P

Paul Pedersen

I guess that was it. When I called up the Computer Management console, it
froze when I tried to access the Indexing service.

I restarted in Safe Mode, emptied the indexing catalog, and restarted. Seems
to be OK now.

Thanks!

It would still be nice to see what all is included in System Idle Process.
The Indexing service is obviously in there, but I don't know what else.
 
J

JS

You're Welcome.

JS

Paul Pedersen said:
I guess that was it. When I called up the Computer Management console, it
froze when I tried to access the Indexing service.

I restarted in Safe Mode, emptied the indexing catalog, and restarted.
Seems to be OK now.

Thanks!

It would still be nice to see what all is included in System Idle Process.
The Indexing service is obviously in there, but I don't know what else.
Click to expand...
 
J

JS

System Idle process does nothing, CPU is twiddling it's thumbs waiting for
something to do.
When services are active/enabled they take as little or as much as needed of
the CPU resources but are not part of the Idle process.

JS
 
P

Paul Pedersen

But still, the indexing service was taking lots of cycles, enough to slow me
down considerably, yet it didn't show in the task manager.
 
J

JS

Although I don't have this service running, more than likely when using
'Process Explorer' it would listed under one of the many SCVHOST.EXE
processes, which is why you most likely do not see it unless you go hunting
and look at each process.

When using Windows Task Manager you can not expand a SCVHOST.EXE process
like 'Process Explorer' can to see what it running.

JS
 
J

JS

I stand corrected, I started the Indexing service (with Process Explorer
already up and running). Once this service was started a new process named
'cisvc.exe' started, it doesn't use much CPU time but as expected you can
see the disk activity increase from time to time. cisvc.exe also is listed
when using Windows Task Manager.

JS
 
R

Rock

Paul Pedersen said:
My computer occasionally bogs down terribly for almost up to a minute.
Sometimes there's a lot of disk thrashing, and sometimes not.

I have 1GB of ram. Virtual memory is 1.5GB. There's more than 40GB free
disk space. The disk has been checked for errors and recently
defragmented. I keep the registry cleaned with Ace Utilities.

Calling up the Task Manager (which is difficult to do, because the system
is so slow), I can see that nothing is using any significant processor
time except "System Idle Process", which remains at 95%+. Page file usage
is around 25% or less.

I have the indexing service turned on, but that is supposed to remain idle
while I'm working.

Clearly, something is going on in System Idle Process, probably a lot of
things. But what might be causing this problem?
Click to expand...


In addition to the other replies, there are certain activities that get
rolled into System Idle as shown in task manager. You should see these
processes as separate with process explorer. Included in this are Hardware
Interrupts and DPCs (Deferred Procedure Calls). In process explorer they
will show as processes under the System Idle process. I'm not sure why you
didn't show up in your case.

I'm not saying this is caused by malware, I saw your reply about turning off
indexing stopping the issue, and NOD32 is excellent, but what other
anti-malware scanners to you use that look for non viral malware, such as
Ad-Aware, Spybot S&D, SuperAntiSpyware, etc?
 
K

Kelly

Added info:

Run the Task Manager, go to View/Select Columns, and turn on the following
columns: "I/O Read Bytes" and "I/O Write Bytes." This will give you details
as to which process is accessing the disk.

Although many processes will be accessing the disk, look for one with a high
total or a fast rate of increase, especially when you hear the drive being
accessed.

One further suggestion regarding Task Manager stated by Ron Martell:

In the Processes tab if you click twice on the column heading for any
column then the list will be sorted in descending order based on the
value for that column. This helps to identify which processes have
the highest values for any given item.

Suggestion: Run the undo on line 367 (right hand side):
http://www.kellys-korner-xp.com/xp_tweaks.htm

SequoiaView:
http://www.win.tue.nl/sequoiaview

Hard Disk Performance Is Slower Than You Expect
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;Q308219


--

All the Best,
Kelly (MS-MVP/DTS&XP)

Taskbar Repair Tool Plus!
http://www.kellys-korner-xp.com/taskbarplus!.htm
 

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