[mrplow]

I've had my intel iMac since it was releaed with minimal issues... the past couple days I've noticed my CPU meter (via activity monitor) has been around 100-150% idle.. when I load it up and look at the list of processes, 5% max is listed as being used.. yet it shows approx 50% used for user and and 16% system, etc... doesn't make any sense. If I reboot it runs at 0-5% CPU for a few mins then kicks back up. Running in windows has no issues whatsoever.... I'm ready to reinstall OS X unless someone has a nice solution to this problem??

Thanks... (friggin bizarre!)

[uicandrew]

just a shot in the dark, but is the imac running any background "maintenance" tasks? (scheduled maintenance)

or do you have many external drives attached? maybe it is indexing it.

i've never had any problems like that with my intel imac. good luck

[Big Mac]

According to Activity Monitor, what program is taking up all the time? You said it was a user process, but you did not indicate what it was.

[mrplow]

That's the thing, it doesn't show any process using the CPU (atleast not to the extreme that is going on)... it's really strange, maybe 10.4.7 will somehow fix it.. or else it looks like I'm reinstalling >=[

[parsec_kadets]

Go into Terminal and run the top command. If you want to sort by CPU usage, use top -u.

[mrplow]

Again, it shows >50% of the CPU being used but lists less than 20% ((mds was only momentarily that high.. it's now at 0) apps using it... doesn't add up!

[Menka]

I'm experiencing the same problem here, but on a MacBook Pro. Both cores show an activity of about 50% with no apparent reason.

Are there any hidden tasks that don't show up?

Here (part of) my top output:

Processes: 58 total, 5 running, 53 sleeping... 189 threads 13:23:05
Load Avg: 1.81, 1.39, 1.28 CPU usage: 52.8% user, 11.7% sys, 35.5% idle
SharedLibs: num = 138, resident = 31.7M code, 4.59M data, 6.38M LinkEdit
MemRegions: num = 5621, resident = 208M + 18.5M private, 83.8M shared
PhysMem: 115M wired, 127M active, 402M inactive, 645M used, 1.37G free
VM: 9.42G + 89.9M 22776(0) pageins, 0(0) pageouts

PID COMMAND %CPU TIME #TH #PRTS #MREGS RPRVT RSHRD RSIZE VSIZE
13253 firefox-bi 6.6% 0:15.40 3 89 205 22.2M 26.3M 41.2M 396M
9412 top 5.6% 0:01.92 1 19 20 1.00M 804K 1.46M 26.9M
0 kernel_tas 1.3% 2:14.80 45 2 1439 12.6M 0K 59.5M- 1.18G-
83 python 1.3% 1:32.67 1 15 134 6.39M 1.72M 7.04M 32.2M
1 launchd 1.1% 1:15.26 3 251 21 208K- 824K+ 520K+ 27.7M
31 bfobserver 0.9% 1:08.26 3 38 111 96.4M+ 1.19M 97.0M+ 131M
9258 Terminal 0.8% 0:00.58 4 90 110 1.77M 10.4M 8.78M 359M
57 WindowServ 0.6% 0:26.40 3 247 338 4.38M 30.6M 31.5M 350M
43 notifyd 0.5% 0:37.91 2 87 21 204K 816K 460K 27.2M
201 mds 0.5% 0:36.78 8 89 67 3.36M 2.59M 4.61M 43.7M
98 EPSON Scan 0.2% 0:19.73 2 72 117 9.16M 5.61M 11.2M 422M
91 SystemUISe 0.0% 0:01.59 3 212 174 3.21M 7.66M 6.89M 359M
20006 mdimport 0.0% 0:00.53 3 61 40 660K 2.70M 2.19M 38.3M
64 coreservic 0.0% 0:01.95 3 109 117 1.06M 6.29M 6.12M 35.3M
119 ntpd 0.0% 0:00.31 1 11 19 80K 1.06M 380K 27.1M
147 ntpd 0.0% 0:00.01 1 8 19 68K 1.06M 232K+ 27.1M
209 prl_dhcpd 0.0% 0:00.22 1 13 23 2.36M 1.32M 2.96M 29.5M
100 translated 0.0% 0:00.06 1 11 20 152K 740K 196K 26.8M