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RELATED: CPU Basics: Multiple CPUs, Cores, and Hyper-Threading Explained

A System Idle Process is a normal part of your OS that runs a single thread on each CPU core for a multiprocessor system, while systems that use hyperthreading have one idle thread per logical processor. System Idle Processes are native to Windows NT operating systems, dating back to 1993-they also appear in Unix-like operating systems such as Linux but operate a bit differently. Windows runs this process as part of the SYSTEM user account, so it’s always active in the background while Windows is running. Without this process always keeping your processor occupied with something to do, your system could potentially freeze. RELATED: Windows Task Manager: The Complete Guide Why Does Windows Need a System Idle Process? Windows hides the System Idle Process information from the normal Processes tab in Windows 10’s Task Manager to keep things simple, but it’s still shown on the Details tab.

You can think of it as a simple placeholder. That’s why the Task Manager describes this process as the “percentage of time the processor is idle.” It has a PID (process identifier) of 0. If programs are using 5% of your CPU, the System Idle Process will be using 95% of your CPU. In other words, the CPU resources used by the System Idle Process are just the CPU resources that aren’t being used.

Without this process constantly keeping your processor occupied with something to do, your system could potentially freeze. But the System Idle Process is just that an idling process made by the operating system. If you’ve ever poked around in the Task Manager-Windows 10 users have to look under the “Details” tab-you’ll see that the System Idle Process is using most, if not all, of your CPU.