can anyone help me?

I reinstalled XP fresh about 5 times now and the system idle process is sucking up so much of the CPU!

I haven't even added any programs or downloaded any MS updates yet!

only thing running is Foxfire browser & the Thunderbird email program.

Plus the CPU usage shows it keeps bouncing between 56-95 %??

Jo,

I'm not good with the technical side of computers (like CPU usage) but my husband is a tech wizard when it comes to these things.... so I'll ask him about it when he gets home from work tonight.

What type of CPU do you have? He will probably need to know some of the details about your hardware in order to help figure out what the cause could be... if you don't want to post those details online, just shoot me a PM or email.

Liz

And if her husband can't answer, mine can. Let me know.

If you just type in "system idle process explained" in a search engine it'll bring up posts explaining what it means.

System Idle Process explained...
http://forum.osnn.net/showpost.php?p=13824&postcount=1

I get the impression it's typical, but I might also be wrong as I'm not quite awake.

If I click on Task Manager, it's the CPU percentage is fluctuating heaps. In fact when I first click TAsk Manager and I'm not doing anything else, it goes immediately to CPU usage 100% then slides down to 30% and then fluctuates at lower percentages.

AMD Athlon XP1800 - running it at only 1.1 {slower setting}
ASUS motherboard 512 ram
Win XP SP1
dual boot sys 2 had drive XP on #1 & Linux OS on #2


this just started happening since I have been installing an reinstalling XP & on my second HD I have been installing various Linux OS but they aren't running - only windows.

Ive tried sorting thru the services but that didn't change anything

I have to check your link now lara

jo...can you tell us exactly what programs are running?

sometimes it can be your printer...your internet service trying to do auto updates. or programs trying over and over to connect to the internet.

my hp printer came with all kinds of graffic programs. boy was it a pain to get rid of them. but they used up alot of my cpu

Hi Jo...

Hubby says his initial thought is that your CPU (AMD Athlon XP1800) is too slow/old/outdated (his words) to efficiently run WindowsXP.

WinXP uses a lot of system resources, so it needs a good system in order to run without sucking all the resources out of your system.

Has WinXP ever run effectively on this PC in the past? If you have had WinXP on this machine before, and it worked fine before, then that complicates things and makes the list of possibilities quite long and quite difficult to figure out without actually loking at the system.

He also said that one possibility could be a virus on one of the hard drives that remains in the system even after doing a re-install of Windows... have you run a good virus-scan lately that checks for both Windows and Linux viruses?

Even as he is telling me about the other possibilities, he keeps repeating "it's gotta be the 1800 though, an 1800 just can't handle WinXP".

So, that's what my geek says, and I hope it helps.

Liz

Basically system idle process shows you how much of your cpu/ram isn't being used by other programs.

I'm not even running the CPU at full capacity-
I've been running this same setup with/XP for 4 yrs -

this is a new problem - it always worked fine before{ - unless I used the via voice recognition program - then it would bog down a lot}.

Hi Mike,
Ok so if the CPU and having the high numbers at idle is not the problem-

I wonder what could be causing the system to fluctuate from normal to very draggy and slow reactions.

processes running-
i'm logged on to my profile and hubby is still logged into his.

2-csrss.exe= system
2- explore.exe = me/hubby
3- svchost .exe= sys
1-svchost .exe = network
1- svchost .exe = local
2- winlogon = me/hubby
2- wpabaln.exe = me/hubby
2-aircfg
2 explorer
lsass
services
smss
spoolsv
system
task manager
thunderbird mail
firefox browser


all are normal priority except winlogon is at High { can I change that to normal?}
and csrss is at high

daughter wonders if it might be because of the Linux on the other hard drive?
that wasn't a problem before though.

yes I had mcafee " full protection " since august - plus spybot none of those installed yet.
new hard drive from last summer too

no printer s or much of anything even loaded yet - just the basics - email & firefox browser

Maybe this could help:
In 'run' - msconfig - program tab:
uncheck the Firefox
uncheck the thunderbird
uncheck all but just the
"run dll" & all taskbar
and virus protection
(you could try unchecking your AV pgm too)
from loading at startup.......
.......click 'apply' and 'OK'
.........reboot
.......go back & doublecheck that anything unchecked
doesn't come back again on its own- see if it does.
This only stops from loading and running at startup.
All pgms can still be launched from the start menu