Win98/ DirectX 8: High idle CPU load "bug"

[aLu]

I'm not sure if this belongs in here, but I guess most of you know their DirectX better than average. Maybe so. has a suggestion or similar experience. This is a funny thing I only discovered recently, and most likely caused by some stupid program I installed. Somehow Media Player (or any other player) seems to trigger it.
At boot time the idle CPU load (Duron 700) is about 7-13%. After opening and closing a video file, it rises (and stays) at 68-74%!! So - you can watch it drop when the movie is open, and rise when it's closed - same when you move the mouse or start another app.

There is no background task that could explain this. Dr. Watson reported once that GDI.EXE got patched by <unknown>, but replacing it didn't fix anything. I'm still (re)searching for clues - if I find any, I will add them here.
This could be DirectX 8-related (my Nvidia PCI graphic drivers are getting a little outdated, and some games run slower and more unstable than they should). I just re-installed Win98 and the bug was there right after DirectX/IE 5.5 installation (even with WAV files), but disappeared when I installed Media Player 7.1. Must be one of the last 8 progs/ plugins I installed that reset the thing!!! So - let's do it once again ...

SYSTEM INFO:
Duron 700, DirectX 8a (or 8.1), Nvidia Detonator 3 drivers for Creative Vanta PCI, VIA Board (SD-RAM)

[haroldw]

There is no problem here. You are misunderstanding "idle" CPU load. Which is just the reverse of CPU load. Idle CPU load is functioning exactly the way it is supposed to. A high percentage means most of the CPU processes are not being used, a low percentage means the CPU is being heavily used.

In your example you say at boot time idle CPU load is 7-13 percent. Well a lot of processes and other things are initially starting then, so the "CPU load" is high, in this case 87-93 percent.

"You can watch it drop when the movie is open" yes, the CPU is being used more heavily by your movie playing apps and processes, so the "idle" time is less. "And rise when it's closed" the CPU is not being used much, so it has more "idle" time.

Any time you are running programs the idle CPU load should decrease as opposed to not having any programs running.

You say the problem dissappeared when you installed Media Player 7.1. I'm sure that "behavior" is still there. It may not be as noticable Maybe Media Player 7.1 is more efficient at playing movies than the previous version.

Start encoding a avi file to mpeg, I guarantee you the idle cpu time will decrease drastically as the CPU is being used much more heavily.