What is System Idle Process

Archived from groups: alt.sys.pc-clone.dell (More info?)

At times my disk drive starts working for no apparent reason while I am
on-line. When I check CPU usage, very often the System Idle Process is
working.

What does this mean??

Mel

Archived from groups: alt.sys.pc-clone.dell (More info?)

MB <mel@prodigy.invalid.net> wrote:
> At times my disk drive starts working for no apparent reason while I am
> on-line. When I check CPU usage, very often the System Idle Process is
> working.

> What does this mean??

It's much like zero. A place holder or label. It means the system is
idle.

If you want to know the details, the kernel is looping while the process
ready queue sits empty.

Archived from groups: alt.sys.pc-clone.dell (More info?)

Brian <demographic@ucsd.edu> wrote:

>MB <mel@prodigy.invalid.net> wrote:

>> At times my disk drive starts working for no apparent reason while I am
>> on-line. When I check CPU usage, very often the System Idle Process is
>> working.
>
>> What does this mean??

>It's much like zero. A place holder or label. It means the system is
>idle.
>
>If you want to know the details, the kernel is looping while the process
>ready queue sits empty.

Which means, to be specific, that the System Idle Process is not
the source of your disk drive activity.

To find that out, keep your Task Manager active, if minimized,
with the Processes tab selected. On that tab, click twice on the
CPU column, so that it is in a descending sort of % CPU usage.

Next time that unexpected disk drive activity occurs, restore the
Task Manager and see what is active that might be writing to the
drive.

One pretty good source for deciphering those arcane process names
can be found at:

http://www.answersthatwork.com/Tas [...] sklist.htm
--
OJ III
[Email to Yahoo address may be burned before reading.
Lower and crunch the sig and you'll net me at comcast.]