Activity Monitor shows CPU Usage 40% for system???

My wife has a 2009 13" Unibody Macbook Pro that I feel is slower than it should be (slower than my 2007 17" MBP). When I open Activity Monitor, it shows that "% System" is taking up 40% of the processor. My gut tells me this should be something like...10%. Any ideas why this might be happening and how to remedy it?

The full stats of the laptop...

2009 13" MBP 5,5
Intel Core 2 Duo 2.13 MHz
2GB RAM
500 GB Momentus XT HDD

Thanks everybody!!!

Activity monitor for my Mac says "% System" is between 5-6%...this is with three applications open.

Here's some ideas:

- when was the last time this computer was restarted?
- when was the last time permissions on this computer were repaired?
- how many applications were opened when you checked the "% System" cpu usage?
- when you checked the "% system" cpu usage...was the computer doing something like rendering a photo in Photoshop...or some sort of other activity that requires constant cpu resources?
- does your wife's computer have a "ton" of widgets and/or other utilities that load automatically when the system boots?

Some stuff to consider:

- Nick

What is she running? Take a look through the processes in Activity Monitor and see what may be using up a large chunk of resources. It's also worth noting that something may be starting when she logs in so take a look at the login items for her account (System Preferences > Accounts > click her user > Login Items).

She does have Photoshop CS3 running but it is not rendering or doing any processes. The computer hasn't been restarted in a week or so but that's standard (I don't restart mine for a month sometimes).

The weird thing is, the activities that are listed (in order of how much % is being used I assume) doesn't show a definitive source for all this missing CPU power.

I'll try to reboot and see what happens....

I rebooted and it seems fine now...when she's worked for a while I will look back in at the Activity Monitor. Thanks for the advice!

Mackerley said:

The computer hasn't been restarted in a week or so but that's standard (I don't restart mine for a month sometimes).

Click to expand...

Sometimes I don't reboot my computer for long times as well (weeks or more). But when it starts to act a little "funky"...the first thing I do is reboot it to see if that clears things up.

Glad to hear the reboot seems to have helped.

- Nick

Rebooting is a good way to ensure that any process that was running away so to speak is killed. I don't use Photoshop myself but I imagine that if it was the only huge process running, it was likely the culprit.

You can always use top from the command line as well as it seems to report things slightly differently than AM. I just tried it now with Opera and it was reporting different values. To use top, simply open up a Terminal window (/Applications/Utilities), type top and press enter. Once you find the process that is causing you problems, remember the PID (far left column). Push Q to quit top and then enter the following: Replace PID with the PID from top that was causing you problems. Press enter and voila!

After some mild Photoshop work the problem seems to be resolved. Rebooting is usually my first action for a problem, but the laptop seems to have slowed down over the past few months (after several reboots) so I thought it might be something more sinister. If it comes back I'll post another thread. Thanks!