excessive system idle processing upon start up in Win XP 64
 

What would be the cause of this?

Upon start up - when XP appears it begins to load start up applications then
you get an hour glass = CTtl/ALT/Del you see that the system idle process is
consuming 99% of processor resources. This goes on for about 1 minute until
computer is usable.

I have seen this happen before on just XP (different computer).

Re: excessive system idle processing upon start up in Win XP 64
 

"Mike" <Mike@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:090CFD04-F064-41EE-82F2-A61C4B880545@microsoft.com...
> What would be the cause of this?
>
> Upon start up - when XP appears it begins to load start up applications
> then
> you get an hour glass = CTtl/ALT/Del you see that the system idle process
> is
> consuming 99% of processor resources. This goes on for about 1 minute
> until
> computer is usable.
>
> I have seen this happen before on just XP (different computer).

its probably the SYSTEM process (PID:4 in most cases) ... not sure what its
doing, but I have seen the same thing on numerous XP systems as well.

Re: excessive system idle processing upon start up in Win XP 64
 

Not sure what it's doing either... It's the system idle process...



"Nut Cracker" wrote:

>
> "Mike" <Mike@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
> news:090CFD04-F064-41EE-82F2-A61C4B880545@microsoft.com...
> > What would be the cause of this?
> >
> > Upon start up - when XP appears it begins to load start up applications
> > then
> > you get an hour glass = CTtl/ALT/Del you see that the system idle process
> > is
> > consuming 99% of processor resources. This goes on for about 1 minute
> > until
> > computer is usable.
> >
> > I have seen this happen before on just XP (different computer).
>
> its probably the SYSTEM process (PID:4 in most cases) ... not sure what its
> doing, but I have seen the same thing on numerous XP systems as well.
>
>
>

Re: excessive system idle processing upon start up in Win XP 64
 

System idle processes is *supposed* to gobble up any CPU time that is unused
by other processes. This is completely normal behavior and nothing to be
worried about. Pretty much, it the process that Windows assigns the CPU to
when it has nothing else to do. (All operating systems have some "idle
process," whether it is actually shown to you or not.)

As for your problem, it's not uncommon to experience hangs shortly after you
log in while applications are loading. If you think you are experiencing
something unreasonable, you can try selectively disabling startup items and
services with msconfig (Start -> Run "msconfig") and figure out which it is
by process of elimination.

- Aaron

"Mike" <Mike@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:B6CB8905-1935-4FA7-88FB-5AFC970C8518@microsoft.com...
> Not sure what it's doing either... It's the system idle process...
>
>
>
> "Nut Cracker" wrote:
>
>>
>> "Mike" <Mike@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
>> news:090CFD04-F064-41EE-82F2-A61C4B880545@microsoft.com...
>> > What would be the cause of this?
>> >
>> > Upon start up - when XP appears it begins to load start up applications
>> > then
>> > you get an hour glass = CTtl/ALT/Del you see that the system idle
>> > process
>> > is
>> > consuming 99% of processor resources. This goes on for about 1 minute
>> > until
>> > computer is usable.
>> >
>> > I have seen this happen before on just XP (different computer).
>>
>> its probably the SYSTEM process (PID:4 in most cases) ... not sure what
>> its
>> doing, but I have seen the same thing on numerous XP systems as well.
>>
>>
>>

Re: excessive system idle processing upon start up in Win XP 64
 

Hi,
who ever knows what a pc does starting up is a real professionel.

But there are a lot of things to do, for example "load all the files there
are to be used"
(load here and there a dll or a config file or the swapfile, the unload it
after usage and so on)
which really bothers the cpu, which means "the cpu with the system process"
is more or less waiting untill this stuff is done.

At least you gave the cpu some work, actualising the chart in task manager.

regards

Re: excessive system idle processing upon start up in Win XP 64
 

Watch your hard drive activity as well. You may just need more physical RAM
causing the system to use the hard drive (paging file). If you are low on
physical RAM, your system may lag dramatically on startup (indicated by the
HDD LED being solidly lit for long periods) even though the CPU is nearly
idle. This is not the likely culprit if you have more than 512MB, but one of
my laptops with 512MB runs out of RAM during startup and causes significant
lag. Good luck.

~Spinnacre

Re: excessive system idle processing upon start up in Win XP 64
 

> What would be the cause of this?
>
> Upon start up - when XP appears it begins to load start up applications
> then
> you get an hour glass = CTtl/ALT/Del you see that the system idle process
> is
> consuming 99% of processor resources. This goes on for about 1 minute
> until
> computer is usable.
>
> I have seen this happen before on just XP (different computer).

Some process might be waiting for *something* to happen before completing
the bootup process and just sits there until it times out. Unattached
device? Unavailable network connection? Who knows...when I cold boot my XP
x64 machine, if I let it sit at the login prompt, it'll stay there seemingly
doing nothing for a minute or two, then there's a sudden flurry of hard disk
activity--drive light stays on--for the next minute or so. If I try to
login any time before that's done, it takes forever to get to my desktop.
I've taken the habit of walking away from the PC after I boot it up and let
it sit at the login screen.

In my case, the event log doesn't yield any real clues...