"System" and "System Idle Process" taking up the computer's entire memory?

Question

Here's the thing. I boot this thing up, and everything's nice and fast, up until I get to the log-in screen. My mouse lags like heck, if it works -at all-, and it's nearly impossible to log in. No password on this clunker, so all I have to do is hit enter, and even -that- takes twenty seconds for the computer to understand.

In the unlikely event that I actually manage to log in, the desktop and everything else take an extremely long time to load. If at all, that is. I can sometimes get the task manager working, and on the few times I have, I've tried closing out of a lot of different things.

I'm pretty familiar with what I can close without screwing things up. But the thing is, I can't even do -that-. I can close one or two processes, but after that it just freezes up on me completely. Once or twice, I've clicked the "CPU" tab to sort everything so that I can see what's taking up all my speed. The two top things are always "System", and "System Idle Process". Tried closing both, but obviously neither will do it. Access denied, and all that.

I know "System Idle Process" just runs the resources back through, so that might not be causing the problem. But "System" is a 60kb process at -max-, and it seems to be taking more resources than anything else, and I don't have any idea why.

At one point, I got everything to run normally by doing a system restore, but shortly after, I went and tried to install something. I had to restart, and once it got running again, the problem was back. System restore didn't work, nor did restarting it several times.

One thing I've noticed, is that this problem doesn't happen if I boot it in "Safe Mode" or "Safe Mode with Networking". The latter is how I'm even able to get online and ask this question. I have limited functionality here, though obviously it's getting old.

So, experts, what do I do? I'm utterly lost.

Answer 1

FYI:

It's proper etiquette to mention your OS, System specs, computer make and model, any new hardware or software changes.





It's *probably a driver, disable drivers one at a time until you figure it out. Try video display drivers first. Do you have a USB mouse? If you do try unplugging it and using a PS2 mouse.



EDIT:

1. (If SP3 for XP was recently installed, uninstall it from add remove programs)

2. If this is a laptop, remove your batter and start it up with AC power only.





This is very common with USB root hub drivers. I recommend trying a repair installation of windows if you just can't solve it and can't afford to pay somebody to fix it. It seems most likely to be a driver, and as you state it doesn't happen in safe mode, IE, limited driver mode. You also mentioned that when you did a system restore it was fine until you installed something, what was it you installed? If it was a USB device, then I again urge you to uninstall the USB root hub and restart the computer. I don't know exactly what it is but it is most likely to be a driver and a USB related driver is very common.

Answer 2

Yes you are right. It's hard to determine if this is hardware or software problem.



So System Idle Process takes more CPU times but what about the memory? Which processes hog more memory?



Have you try running your anti virus and see what they found?



You can also try CCleaner to find any 'crap' in your computer.



Also check if your computer has so many startup, this usually bog your computer down on login.



Installing too many program might be the cause of your problem too. I'm not too sure about this, but you can try to uninstall some program you don't need, might help you a bit.



"...tried to install something.." have you checked that this 'something' is not a malware?

Answer 3

Boot up in the safe mode and run a good anti-virus software like Kaspersky or Norton Internet Protection. You might have driver problems, or you might have a virus. There is a trojan virus that behaves just as you describe.