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What Is The System Idle Process?
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What is the System Idle Process ?
Many people see this listed in their Task Manager and don't really understand what it is, or why it shows as using close to 100% of their CPU. Hopefully this brief explanation will help people understand it a little better ...
(Side note: I will be using " SIP " to refer to the System Idle Process for the rest of this post)
Microsoft describes the SIP in this way:
"This process is a single thread running on each processor, which has the sole task of accounting for processor time when the system isn't processing other threads. In Task Manager, expect this process to account for the majority of processor time."
Think of the SIP as a counter of how much cpu time is NOT being used by other processes. In other words, it displays (in a percentage) the amount of cpu idle time that is free to be used by any process that may need it. XP incorporates a priority-based cpu scheduler. This means that each process is assigned a priority and therefore gets to use the cpu based on the priority assigned to it. This keeps things nice and organized and maximizes productivity of the operating system.
So, in short, it's perfectly normal to see the SIP using 90+% of the cpu in Task Manager. That just means that 90+% of the cpu is free for other processes that need it.
[Using an alternative word for a hyperlink can help to maintain the forum formatting - i.e. if you want to link to a website with a really long URL address the result can lead to messy forum formatting with the need to scroll left & right to read the page - see below screen shot]
Type a word/phrase you would like to link a webpage to, highlight the complete word/phrase with your left mouse button
Press the hyperlink button from the text editor
Type the full URL of the website you want to link to and press OK.
If you are unable to see the control panel then read this thread, it should point you in the right direction
If you decide to use a custom image as your signature, you will need to use html code to display the image. You will also need the image to be hosted on the Internet, you can upload a personal image to your own webspace (if you have this facility) or you can use a free image host such as ImageShack.
Once you have loaded up the control panel and selected "Message Signature" you will need to type the html in the text editor. You can copy the below example & just change "http://location_of_where_your_image_is_hosted.gif" to the location of your image on the Internet.
It is also a good idea to put a break before your signature using the break html <br> this will help maintain forum formatting and keep your post separate to your signature.
<br>
<IMG src="http://location_of_where_your_image_is_hosted.gif">
There are 2 different methods to find a list of all your previous posts
Select the "Search" link at the top of the page - click on "Advanced Search" - type your forum user name into the search field under "Filter by username or ID" and click search (making sure you have the Exact name match checked).
or
Click the link attached to your username at the top of the page
just click on the "Show all posts from this member" hyperlink in the bottom left corner of your profile
This question gets asked all of the time - luckily there is a really simple answer..
If your task manager looks like the image on the left - double click on the grey border to get it to look like the image on the right.
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If you receive the following message while trying to delete a file from your Pc then follow the instructions below (as long as you are sure the file is safe to delete)
This is optional - you can download a free program which will tell you what process is actually blocking your file from being deleted - WhoLockMe
Then you can either use a free program like MoveOnBoot to delete the file
or
you can use the dos delete command via the command prompt - instructions can be found Here
If you are analysing your hard drive space find that the figures don't match - 80gig showing as 74gig, then check the information below..
An 80 GB hard drive doesn't actually have 80GB of usable space on it. It has about 75 GB of usable space. This is because hard drive space is calculated using 1024 bytes in one kilobyte. You will need to make sure all hidden files/folders are viewable to check some of the information below.
The math is:
80,000,000,000/(1024*1024*1024) = 74.6 MB
Space is also taken up by
* Pagefile
* System Restore
* If your drive is NTFS, the MFT reserves 12 1/2% of the drive
* Undeleted Trash
* Temporary Internet Files
An excellent program to analyse all of your partitions is Treesize Pro - this will give you a detailed breakdown on all hard drive space usage.
If you receive the following error message when trying to load up Task Manager then try the following fix..
"Task Manager has been disabled by your system administrator"
(make sure you backup your registry before making any changes - you can use a free program like Erunt to make a complete registry backup)
Load up the windows registry - Start - Run - (type) regedit - Return
navigate to - HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System
double click on DisableTaskMgr in the right window and set the data to 0
You can use Windows Xp's built in System Configuration Utility (msconfig for short) to remove programs from your startup.
To load the system configuration utility.. Start - Run - (type) msconfig - Return - Select the Startup (tab)
Simply untick the startup entry you wish to remove - press ok and you will be asked to restart your computer. After you have restarted the computer, you will receive a popup message stating that the changes have been applied.
Place a check in the "Don't show this message" box and press ok