re: System Idle Process taking 95% of CPU
Sunday, November 3, 2002 at 12:52 pm
Windows XP Annoyances Discussion Forum
Posted by M P
(3 messages posted)
Ok CK...
I have a Tyan ThunderBolt running dual P3 850, 2gigs of ram, 640 gigs of HD space
using scsi and ide drives and a DVD-Ram and a DVD-R burner. I am currently experiencing
sys idle process slowdown. For some reason, it starts using both processors, running
at 92-96% during rendering and after about 10 minutes, one drops off and I only get
around 55% of total processor power. I tried rebooting and it happened again but
this time, the other processor dropped off after about 10 minutes. One time I let
it render for about 4 hours under 50% and then all of the sudden, the other processor
kicked in giving me back my 98%!!! What goes here??
I have upgraded the sys bios to the current, checked for newer drivers and installed,
switched to a 530watt power supply, changed the processor heatsink fans, (this case
has 13 fans throughout) so heat isn't the factor, I would assume. Your insight would
be greatly appreciated.
Thanks, M P
On Sunday, November 3, 2002 at 9:12 am, ckrokit wrote:
>What are your system specs? Specifically the motherboard manufacturer and model.
> Some motherboards have incompatibilities and have had to require replacement or
>be returned to the manufacturer for modification. This has happened to me. In
some
>cases, a BIOS upgrade can be done to fix it. There were MB's identified by MS and
>the vendors to be a problem. If you have one of those boards, the problem was that
>their design was not completed for the final ACPI spec. In some boards the CPU
usage
>is being incorrectly reported. This can either involve a fix from MS or can be
a
>design problem in the motherboard which can not be fixed and involves installing
>the Standard PC Hal which disables the ACPI. If it is a motherboard problem, you
>will find that what works in NT 4, does not work in Win 2000 and XP. As I have
written
>before in this forum, the system idle process is also incorporated in other OP systems,
>incuding MAC OS X, Linux, etc. If any of you have used software CPU coolers for
>Win 9X, this is essentially all a software cooler is. It just adds the system idle
>process. To date in all of the systems I have worked on (thousands of them), hardware
>has been the cause for reported problems in the system idle process and high idle
>CPU usage/sluggish response. Anybody having problems, send your specs to me and
>I will research it for you. I am trying to compile a list of hardware that seems
>to be causing this problem in 2000 and XP. As I said, if everything works OK in
>NT4, and your CPU usage hangs high (30-60% while idle) under 2000 XP, (check it
before
>any other software is installed) expect that you have a hardware problem and I suspect
>that your MB is 2 to 3 or more years older. If it is a new motherboard, (which
I
>haven't seen any to date) you may have to contact the MB vendor and tell them the
>problem you are having. At that point both MS and the vendor will have to bump
heads
>and decide what the problem is and how to fix it. C K
>
>
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