[- - e r i k - -]

What is going on here? I just reinstalled my OS for the nTh time on my G4 400. Everything is immensly slow. My load average is 3+ without running anything. Kernel tasks is up to 90%.

I've tried loading and unloading RAM. What is going on here?

Code:
Processes:  43 total, 2 running, 41 sleeping... 106 threads            20:43:53
Load Avg:  2.95, 2.80, 1.91     CPU usage:  17.3% user, 82.7% sys, 0.0% idle
SharedLibs: num =  107, resident = 24.8M code, 2.91M data, 6.10M LinkEdit
MemRegions: num =  3491, resident = 39.2M + 8.26M private, 62.6M shared
PhysMem:  70.8M wired,  104M active, 82.0M inactive,  257M used, 1022M free
VM: 3.29G + 76.1M   18144(0) pageins, 0(0) pageouts

  PID COMMAND      %CPU   TIME   #TH #PRTS #MREGS RPRVT  RSHRD  RSIZE  VSIZE
    0 kernel_tas  80.0% 15:29.44  35     2   841  6.58M     0K  45.9M   756M 
  332 Safari      19.0%  0:47.18   5   121   187  5.96M  16.4M  36.9M   179M 
  179 WindowServ   7.4%  0:31.65   2   141   342  11.9M- 34.3M+ 43.0M   206M 
  354 top          5.5%  0:23.78   1    17    27   796K   400K  1.14M  27.0M 
  350 Terminal     0.4%  0:07.74   3    63   118  1.17M  15.9M  21.1M   167M
  293 SystemUISe   0.4%  0:02.57   1   175   161  1.01M  7.62M  4.74M   159M
  294 Finder       0.0%  0:06.49   1    91   124  3.29M  16.4M  11.7M   175M
  331 System Pro   0.0%  0:04.09   2    89   219  2.97M  4.32M  5.96M   158M 
  196 loginwindo   0.0%  0:03.19   4   181   166  2.50M  8.11M  6.05M   138M

[Brazuca]

Do you have any peripherals plugged in? I had this problem with a bad driver for my USB BT adaptor and when I tried to install an non-supported CDRW.

There are threads on this. Do a search.

[mitchell_pgh]

Ummm... that's normal... (or so says my IT people with regards to any problem at work)

[- - e r i k - -]

No it wasn't normal. You are thinking about the idle task. So to you too.

I fixed it. The G4 had an unsupported Adaptec 2096 SCSI card that it was trying to recognize. I removed it (and vacuumed the inside while at it) and my tricked out G4 400 (that I'm going to sell, 100 GB HD, 1256 MB RAM, Radeon 8500) is as fast as ever (thanks to Panther).

Even the Apple 21" Studio Display that I though was dying is now back to it's normal sharpness (I have no idea how that came about though).