Help. Windows task manager shows "system idle process" really cranking up for no reason.?

XP with 50 processes running all the time. You can hear the hard drive spinning up and CPU useage shows over 90% with no apparent reason except in system idle process.

Help. Windows task manager shows "system idle process" really cranking up for no reason.?ballet theater

Well, I've had a similar problem. Is it usually when you start up your computer? If so, it's because of all the startup programs that, well, run on startup! That usually will do it--I recommend trying to limit those programs to only those that need to be started on startup, nothing more--no messengers, or anything like that.

As for the system idle process... That usually hits '99' When nothing else is doing anything. Don't worry about it--Instead worry about the memory being taken by some of those processes!

I'd also recommend you do something such as run a virus scanner, or ad-ware scanner. :)

Help. Windows task manager shows "system idle process" really cranking up for no reason.?chicago theater opera theater

You have a virus

The system idle process uses hardly anything but it will show a lot of memory usage but not 90%
You're confused. When the system idle process is up, that means your system is not busy. Which is a good thing. The system idle process doesn't count toward total CPU utilization for that reason.

What might be happening is that you're low on physical memory. When that happens the OS will swap memory to disk which is excruciatingly slow. Use the performance tab to check for that. When the total commit charge is greater than physical memory swapping will occur. When the commit charge is more than 50% of physical memory Windows will start to push data to the swap space to prepare for a low memory condition.
Hmmm....XP with 50 processes is not completely unreasonable, depending on what you have installed. And you typically want the System Idle Process to show 90% to even 99%.

On the other hand, I would worry about hearing the hard drive spinning.

If your anti-virus and spyware protection programs are updated, run full-system scans.

And JanO's suggestion is a very good one.