Processor Idle Time Percentage

Many of you open the task manager and find a process called "System Inactive Process", which consumes more than 90% of CPU. The reaction is logical. What is happening? Do I have a virus? Well, in principle not, but we are going to tell you what this process is and why it consumes so much.

Index of contents

What is the percentage of processor idle time?

It is a process that starts Windows to prevent our processor from continuously processing resources, saturating and hanging. In English, it appears as "System Idle Process and it is a process that is around 95% or 96% CPU.

It simply means the remaining percentage of processor that is not being consumed by other processes or applications. In case, for example, you start playing a video game, it will require CPU. In this way, the "System Inactive Process" will occupy much less percentage.

It is a process that shows us the percentage of the computer that is not being used. Seeing this process, many believed just the opposite: it is a process that is occupying almost all my processor. In fact, if you look at the PID ( Process IDentifier ), its value is 0, which means that it does not have a number with which Windows associates it as such.

It's really necessary? Why can't I finish this process?

It is very necessary. Otherwise, the processor would always be busy doing chores, which would tire you out too much and eventually cause a general hang. Windows always has this process active in the background without us noticing.

On the other hand, you cannot finish this process, since Windows does not give us that option. In the process description itself, we see that it puts a percentage of processor idle time. This means that we cannot end the process because it is not a normal process, such as "chrome.exe".

It is an empty process, since its function is to illustrate the percentage of CPU inactivity ; In other words, it is a value that shows us the percentage that is not being used by our processor.

Where can I see it?

Depending on whether you have Windows Vista, 7, 8.1 or Windows 10, you are going to see it one way or the other.

Windows 7, Vista and 8.1

Regarding Windows 7 / Vista or Windows 8.1, we can see it by starting the task manager by pressing "Ctrl + Alt + Del". You will get a screen that will let you choose between several options, click on "Start Task Manager".

Next, you go to the "Processes" tab and hit the button on the bottom left "Show processes from all users." Finally, you give the column "CPU" to show you the processes that require the processor the most and Voilá! There you have that process.

Windows 10

In Windows 10 we can open the task manager in the same way. I open it directly using " Ctrl + Shift + Esc ". Now, you have to go to the "Details" tab because the "process" does not appear in the "Processes" tab.

Due to this process, my computer is slow?

Incorrect. This process only shows us what is not used, so it seems incongruous to think that the cause of the slowness of the PC is due to this process.

If your computer is slow and you don't know why, take a look at the task manager, specifically the use of the hard disk, CPU and RAM.

In my experience, in most cases, the slow loading is usually caused because there is a process that is using the hard drive a lot, being this mechanic. If the hard disk is SSD, it does not usually have these problems, but the same case may occur. This was happening recently with Windows 10 background update downloads.

We recommend reading the best SSDs on the market

On the other hand, we recommend the following: get into the task manager to go to the "Start" tab. This section lists all the programs that start automatically with the Windows login. Deactivate the ones you don't need or use.

In short, if your computer is slow, it will not be the fault of the processor inactivity.