What is the significance of the CPU Time reading in Task Manager?

What do you learn from it and what do you use it for?

 

I think it's XP you are enquiring about. If you order the display by cpu time you can see over time which processes are occupying the cpu the most. If everything is OK then System Idle Process will be several lengths ahead of its nearest challenger which, in my case is MSE. It's quite useful for finding the culprit in cases where the system seems suddenly to have seriously slowed down. CPU Time isn't displayed by default of course, you need to select it if you feel something is suddenly dragging the system.

 

Yes, I'm on XP, and I just configured it to show that. It wasn't configured by default to show VM Size, which is absurd!

 

VM size is kind of interesting to see this way. Sort of puts the spotlight on how each program accesses the parts of itself.

I recently added the PID to Task Manager, so I could quickly track down processes that connect to the internet in an unusual way. I use Active Ports occasionally to take a look at what/who is connecting to me. The PID of the program is there in Active Ports making it possible to cross reference...

 

What exactly does PID tell you?

 

It's the program ID. In Active Ports you can also see the PID, so it's possible to see which of your processes (programs) are accessing the internet. If you suspect your PC might have been hacked, it's a nice thing to be able to do...

 

-> Earthling
Does that imply if CPU idle is not at the top of the CPU activity that something is wrong ?

On my XP system CPU seems to spend a large fraction of its time at 100%, especially running IE (when accessing any website) and several other processes which consume less CPU.

Dumb_Question
23.May.2013
Compaq Presario S5160UK (DT261, Celeron 2.7GHz), 1.5GB RAM, XP/SP3

 

I should have made it clear that I meant when the system is idling. As soon as you start some activity, such as browsing, then the processes associated with that will move to the top for a while. That's normal, but if something other than System Idle is showing persistent high cpu usage when you are not doing anything then it needs looking into.