I think you are having a common misunderstanding of processor usage.

But first, a few points about using this forum. If you can, always clear the edit box of the post you are replying to. This prevents it from being displayed again and getting messed up anyway. Helps and looks neater. Second, avoid posting to real old threads like this. People don't go back and look at them that often and your post will normally not be seen. I only saw it because I have the thread marked to send me an e-mail when and if someone posts to it. Something I and most others seldom do. Old threads here do not roll to the top of the list when new posts are made.

What you should do in this form is start a new post with your problem and include a link to the old forum thread or specific post you are referring to, so people can click on it and see what you are talking about. This places your problem at the top of the current list so everyone will see it.

Now back to the problem you do not have.

On any Windows computer, the processor is always 100% busy doing something, even if it is just setting in an "idle" loop waiting for something to do. That is just how computers work and Widows is designed. Some laptops can slow their processor down and use less power if the hardware detects it is in this idle loop, but that is not the issue here.

What good is a fast processor if it is not doing "something" all the time and all of memory is not being used for "something". Windows ME manages all this quite well, freeing up resources when they are needed for more important processes.

Second there is a well documented BUG in Windows 98/ME with their Registry based processor usage indicator. You see this in almost all tools that show you processor usage. Instead of being down around 2% when not doing anything, some Windows systems (kind of random what system will do this and when) will show usage of 50% to 70% and work up to 100% when doing nothing. This is a bug in Windows, Micro$oft acknowledges it in Q227131. Click on that link and read it. You know that is the bug you are seeing if the usage drops down below 20% if you just move the mouse around on the screen real fast.

In addition, if you run two such monitoring programs at the same time, they will both show 100% usage, yet another unfixed bug in Windows. So in other words, all these "nice" to look at usage programs are really useless and should be removed from your system.

Third. The WINTOP program does NOT uses this broken indicator. It was written by Micro$oft, works well and is even nice enough to show you how much of the processor it is taking up while running. It replaces processor or Kernel usage with its own "idle" count and a breakdown of what each loaded Task is using. A much more useful set of information. When the WINTOP "idle" get up to 90% range, it is telling you that the processor can not find any thing useful to do. It is setting there idle. My 1Gh processor is setting at 98.92% idle as I type this because IEXPLORER.EXE and all other tasks running are only using 1% of the processor.

You might notice the KERNEL32.DLL jump in and show usage. That is because it IS the Windows Operating System and does things like display the Windows on the screen, drives all the hardware, handles the network connection, etc.

STMGR.EXE jumps in there all the time, because it is what protects all of the Operating system files from being corrupted or changed when they should not be. And it helps manage memory usage.

So if WINTOP is showing above idle = 95% most of the time, then your machine is doing nothing and you paid for a lot more processor power than you are using. OK, you want that power or speed for quick response when you are doing something. But keep in mind, 99% of the time your system is not doing anything. In addition, you should not use any other program that tries to monitor kennel usage at the same time. The built in System Tools - System Monitor is good enough for any needs. Any of these other programs are just taking up memory and using the processor and not really helping at all. Windows ME has all the tools built into it to do the best possible job of managing the processor, memory and disk Swap file (virtual memory) the best way, buy default. No tweaking required, beyond what I recommend in my Windows Fixes note.

Now, keep WINTOP handy. When you see idle dropping below 90%, something is up. You can then look and see what is running. Problem is, most Spyware/Adware don't really take up that much processor bandwidth. They only cause a problem because they have such bad code, but sometimes they hog the processor due to bugs. They do take up your Internet connection bandwidth, which is a different issue and is hard to measure and detect.

The advantage of WinTop is that it also shows you most of the HIDDEN TASKS that are running, something that the Ctrl-Alt-Del Task Manager does not show you. Most Spyware, Adware and Trojans try to hide from you. WinTop will show most of them. (Trojans are better at hiding and often are not active TASKs that show up even in WinTop, but attach as device drivers.)

Suggest you kick back and watch WinTop run and don't worry about it. Start a DEFRAG and watch idle drop, because DEFRAG uses a lot of processor bandwidth. Get to know the normal programs that run all the time and start from time to time. Learn to love it.

Note: if you see WINMGMT.EXE run and not go away after it is used by programs like System Information, that is yet another Windows BUG and you can use WinTop or Task Manager to kill the task. Another bug you might run it, is if you use Adobe Acrobat Reader from inside an IE window to open an PDF file, you might see its ACRoRD32.EXE program left running after you exit the PDF file and even IE. This is a bug in Adobe/IE. You can kill it in Task Manger, or just start Acrobat Reader from its Icon and exit it, and it will go away. Sometimes the two minor bugs will cause their programs to take up a chunk of the processor bandwidth doing nothing.

To keep my processor busy 24/7 I run Seti@Home analyzing signals from Arecibo looking for possible signals from ET. It gets the 99% of my processor bandwidth that was in the "idle" loop and is doing something useful instead of just setting "idle" when I read post like this.

Written in response to: re: Windows ME Fixes (Ian O'Neill: Saturday, November 8, 2003 at 4:35 am) Responses to this message: re: Windows ME Fixes (John Doty: Sunday, February 15, 2004 at 10:48 pm)

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