System Idle Processes; eat alot of CPU!!!

[StarTAC]

hi guys...

i am running Windows 2000 Server SP2 on a box with these specs:

1120MHz AMD Athlon
576MB RAM
40GB HDD -> Controller 1
8GB HDD -> Controller 2
8GB HDD -> Controller 2

I have noticed that when I have more than two IE windows open, closing one causes the system to stutter for at least one second. It kind of freezes for that amount of time.

When running other applications such as RealOne, along with other apps, I still get some kind of stuttering... i can't say for sure that this is related to the components, as the system has some good power.. in terms of RAM and CPU...

so, when i check the performance monitor, i see the process called System Idle Processes, running in the background, recording CPu utilisation between 97% and 99% .. when i try to end that process, the system tells me that i can't..could this be my problem, as all the other applications use CPU power alot better than this process... how do i kill that process, or make it use less CPU time..?..

all help appreciated... thanks..

 

[kupo]

You cannot kill this process.

Try upgrading IE from windowsupdate.microsoft.com (

http://www.microsoft.com)

This process it taking so much CPU time because there is a bug somewhere in your system.
As windwos is not open soucres, then it's unlikely you can fix this without updating if u don't remember why u did to cause this problem.
If your looking for something and you can't find what your looking for, try searching where you think you won't find what your looking for.

 

[jaeddy]

High CPU utilization by System Idle Process is not a bug- this is the process that occupies your CPU when it's not doing anything else. In most modern systems the CPU is massively overpowered in relation to the actual load being placed on it by applications. Since the CPU doesn't actually stop when it is idle, it spends its time mostly just running in circles (System Idle Process) until the machine goes in to standby (assuming it is configured to do so).

Now, as to why you are experiencing these brief freezes or stutters, updating IE is not a bad starting point, assuming you haven't updated already. Have you got alot of background processes and services running that you don't actually use? Win2k Server loads an awful lot of stuff by default. Try killing some of them. You could also run task manager and watch the processes as you open and close apps, see if anything else is chewing clock cycles at an undue rate.

At the same time, make sure your device drivers, in particular the chipset and controller drivers for your motherboard, are up to date.

A few performance tweaks you could consider would be to move the swap file to a drive on the second controller and set it to a static size (I usually start with 1.5 x system RAM). Two caveats- you may lose the ability to make a crashdump file if you blue screen it (this was true in NT 4.0, unsure about W2K), and if the drives on the secondary controller are significantly slower than the primary you may not gain alot performance-wise.

What does this server do? File Server, Web Server, DNS, WINS, DHCP?

 

[StarTAC]

thanks for all the help guys...

concerning background processes, i usually kill over 90% of them after installing the service pack 2... i only run the services which the system considers a minimum requirement to run... so, i don't have any "servers" running...

looking at the task manager, only the System Idle Processes process is the one using alot of CPU, over 97%... the rest of the processes range between 0 and 3%, CPU usage.. depending on how long they remain active.. i think the highest has been the Music Match app, and the Windows Media encoder, which I use to encode stored and live audio media... and the most they ever used, between them, is just under 10% CPU....

my device drivers are up-to-date.. although your suggestion on checking the chipset and controller drivers for my board is a good idea... i use a GA-7ZX Series VIA KT133+686B Chipset... only problem is the manufacturers didn't provide a proper website, so getting clean, updated drivers is going to be a problem... but i'll look nontheless...

on system performance, i set performance optimisation for applications... my virtual memory config also shows me that i have 864MB as total paging file size for all drives... IIRC, this file should be among the hidden files on the C drive...

but, i wonder, even with alot of memory like i have, and only 150MB RAM is highest i usually operate at, should i really be paging this much..?..

this machine is actually a test machine, in addition to my workstation... we use it to test certain services before we put them into production on the main servers, such as PPTP, Remote Access & Routing Services.... Pre-paid systems, and the like...

all help will be appreciated... thanks a bunch..

 

[StarTAC]

i have been monitoring my system for the last couple of hours, and i have noticed that whenever i minimise or close some of the apps, the system, for some reasons, makes some writes to disk.. during this write, the system stutters and/or freezes, until the writing to disk completes...

i wonder why the system needs to write to disk everytime i minimise or close an app...

all advice appreciated.. thanks..