[Tris]

I would like to know what they are and how I can stop them!
I wouldnt mind, but they do actually chew up a fair chunk of resource and slow the machine down... grr.. (again!)

On happier matters you any plans to head out climbing sometime Tris? might be heading to the Stockport wall in the next few days..

You can't stop it - it isn't actually doing anything...  like I said, if it's at 99% or similar it means that you're machine is doing bugger all. If your system idle process is at 0% cpu then your machine is running flat out and you need to find out which process is taking up the cpu.

Basically ignore the system idle process, look at the graph first on the performance tab on the left, if the graph shows your cpu is flat out then you look at what processes are taking the cpu.

Say you have:

winword.exe = 50%
excel.exe = 20 %
system idle process = 20%
Other 10 processes @ 1% each
The the system idle process just  makes up the difference, in this case 20%. In this case winword.exe (MS Word) is the fucker screwing your machine...

Unfortunately am working late for rest of this week, but was planning to go to Stockport over the weekend at some point - how does this fit with you? Would be good to hook up..

[tomtom]

I get what you're saying, but this is with nothing else running... so the CPU is at 50-80% (its a dual core), the HDD is whirring and none of the other background programs are running more than 2-3%... except for this system idle process with 50-80%!!! whats it doing!

Late sunday aft (6ish?) seems to be a fair time when its quietened down from the kids parties!

[Tris]

I thought it shut at 6pm? I reckon I would be knackered at 6 though - can you not do earlier?

I guess I'm not doing too well at explaining this one 

Like I said initially - it is not really a process (compared to the others). If it's at 95%, it means that your cpu is 95% idle, NOT that is using 95% of the processing power. It is the opposite...

Read this to see if they explain it any better than me 

PS - what os are you running? you may want to find out if something is using up your mem/reading or writing to your HD instead - maybe that is what is killing your machine. It's definitely not the system idle process!!!

[Drew]

Lets see if I can explain this in the simplest possible terms.

Idle means doing nothing. If your computer shows (on the graph) that it is running at a constant 25% (i.e. the processor is calculating 25% as many calculations per second as it physically can), then the "System Idle" is merely showing what is left i.e. 100 - 25 = 75%.

Don't think about it as being a process in itself, more that it is what the processor has available for other processes.

It's not what is going on, it's what isn't going on.

Make sense?

[tomtom]

Oh cock. I see what you both mean 

I'm relating slow performance (churning HDD) to the high idle processes and blaming it... 

I shall go and eat my hat/humble pie...

Its W7 and its only just started doing the HDD churning thing (after a crash not any new sw etc..)...

I think I'll just have a glass of wine and sit down for a bit!

[Tris]

Also - thinking about this and you saying that your machine is running slow, what do the two graphs (on the left of the performance tab in task manager) which show cpu and memory usage look like? Are they showing that the machine is struggling in either or these two areas?

If they both look ok, then the next candidate is hard disk. This is a little trickier to troubleshoot. If you are using a fairly recent Windows OS, you will be able to select what columns you can view (view->select columns) in task manager's processes tab. If you choose to add I/O reads,I/O reads bytes, I/O writes and I/O writes bytes you will be able to see what processes are reading and writing the most to your disk(s).

A better process explorer is Sysinternals process explorer that Microsoft realised was far superior to theirs and pinched it (http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896653.aspx). This will probably mean nothing to you though, so only have a look if you're bored etc

If after doing this and it all checks out, then another possible reason is that you have spyware/adware/virus and a main software component like explorer.exe or rundll32.exe could be fecked and that is why it is running slow. I have seen this before, but for the person involved it needed a rebuild. Try installing/running windows defender/spybot s&d and adaware (they are all free and between them will rid your system of spyware). This is the most likely cause if you have installed any toolbars or similar recently...

Good luck..

[slackline]

If you had a system crash (WTF I thought Win7 was stable  ) it might be worth checking the integrity of the hard drives/partitions to rectify any errors that may have occurred when the system crashed (which might have happened if there was a read/write cycle occurring at the point of crashing).

Can't remember how to do this in M$-Win though I'm afraid.

[Jim]

without reading Tris' last post, I think you have hardware failure somewhere, probably hard disk and unrelated to the OS you are running (ie it would of happened with linux as well) or maybe a virus of some sort

[tomtom]

Thanks all - strange if its a hardware fault it only manifests itself at startup....
I'll monitor over the next couple of days and see what happens...
T

[Jim]

only skim read the thread, probably a virus if its only on start up

[slackline]

without reading Tris' last post, I think you have hardware failure somewhere, probably hard disk and unrelated to the OS you are running (ie it would of happened with linux as well) or maybe a virus of some sort

I'd be interested to hear the results of this.

Do you suspect the MBR is infected Jim?

I'm yet to come across any viruses in penguin land in nine or so years, so something that can sniff out root passwords and get under the hood to infect the system would be useful to know about as the info in the MBR can only be updated by root user under Linux and only an idiot logs in with that account.

[tomtom]

only skim read the thread, probably a virus if its only on start up

Left it scanning when I went to bed last night - no virus found (using avast).....

[Jim]

without reading Tris' last post, I think you have hardware failure somewhere, probably hard disk and unrelated to the OS you are running (ie it would of happened with linux as well) or maybe a virus of some sort

I'd be interested to hear the results of this.

Do you suspect the MBR is infected Jim?

I'm yet to come across any viruses in penguin land in nine or so years, so something that can sniff out root passwords and get under the hood to infect the system would be useful to know about as the info in the MBR can only be updated by root user under Linux and only an idiot logs in with that account.

If you read it again, that is only refering to it if it has hardware failure which is the most likely

[slackline]

without reading Tris' last post, I think you have hardware failure somewhere, probably hard disk and unrelated to the OS you are running (ie it would of happened with linux as well) or maybe a virus of some sort

I'd be interested to hear the results of this.

Do you suspect the MBR is infected Jim?

I'm yet to come across any viruses in penguin land in nine or so years, so something that can sniff out root passwords and get under the hood to infect the system would be useful to know about as the info in the MBR can only be updated by root user under Linux and only an idiot logs in with that account.

If you read it again, that is only refering to it if it has hardware failure which is the most likely

  it was early and I'd just got up (read it and mixed the order of things up in my head whilst processing it).  Apologies.

[Tris]

Tom - if it only happens at startup, try to rule out what programs are starting. If you don't have a hardware issue, it could be you still have spyware (this will not be detected by most AV scanners).

Click start, then type msinfo32 in the run box (search programs and files).

This will bring up the system info panel. On the left click software environment, then startup programs. This will list on the right what starts when you boot into windows. Make sure that everything that is starting is as expected or post the results here or PM me with the list if unsure..

[Palomides]

Interesting fallout from the "Chinese hackers attack Google using IE6 vulnerability" story.

Turn out that the vulnerability is also present in IE7, IE8 and most MS Office applications, running on XP, Vista and Windows 7

MS are planning to issue a patch today. Their understated security advisory is here

Microsoft is investigating reports of limited, targeted attacks against customers of Internet Explorer 6, using a vulnerability in Internet Explorer. This advisory contains information about which versions of Internet Explorer are vulnerable as well as workarounds and mitigations for this issue.
Our investigation so far has shown that Internet Explorer 5.01 Service Pack 4 on Microsoft Windows 2000 Service Pack 4 is not affected, and that Internet Explorer 6 Service Pack 1 on Microsoft Windows 2000 Service Pack 4, and Internet Explorer 6, Internet Explorer 7 and Internet Explorer 8 on supported editions of Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008, Windows 7, and Windows Server 2008 R2 are vulnerable.

Blog entry here, from "The Microsoft Security Response Center (MSRC)
- Working to help protect customers from vulnerabilities in Microsoft software"


Cup of penguin anyone?

[slackline]

Interesting fallout from the "Chinese hackers attack Google using IE6 vulnerability" story.

Turn out that the vulnerability is also present in IE7, IE8 and most MS Office applications, running on XP, Vista and Windows 7

  Would no doubt have been found earlier if there had been more eyes looking at the code, and fixed as soon as it was discovered!

[Tris]

Cup of penguin anyone?

No thanks - I'll stick to using Chrome on Windows 7 

Despite what people think of MS, Windows 7 is a solid OS. Everyone knows IE is shit anyway, this just enforces the point..

[Paul B]

Although I love Win 7 (so far) I've found it slightly frustrating getting some of my older peripherals, printers, vid cams etc. to work well with it. Especially the "looking for solutions", "oh no there are none", whats it doing if you then click on the device and update the driver and lo and behold there is a new version out there?