Why would my cpu show 100% in system monitor when nothing open or running…or is it 100% and goes down as i open more programs…I have tried either way and the cpu stays at 100%
Memory 1.5 GB
Processor Pent 4 2.80GHz
80 GB HD with only SUSE 2.6.34-12
Gnome 2.30.0
I have checked processes and the only thing showing any real use gnome system monitor??
TYAVMIA 
Check the real cpu usage via ‘top’ in a terminal. If this GNOME-monitor says something else, it’s just trash.
If i am reading this right, i went to terminal ,typed in top and in the 1st few lines it reads Cpu’s 70.0%us
30%sy , so i am asuming that this means i am only using 30% I hope i read this right …the swap shows 100% free tasks 150 3 running and rest sleepingand as always TYVM
70%us and 30%sy means your CPU is 100% busy, 70% of it’s time is being spent in user space (outside the kernel) and 30% in system space (inside the kernel).
Top lists the process ID (PID column) and the command (COMMAND column) that started the process, plus the percentage of CPU (%CPU column) that each process is consuming. Operating systems typically run many processes in the background - and top will help reveal this.
What you really want to look for is which COMMAND is consuming the bulk of the CPU. Then report back here or investigate what that command is for.
(BTW - top is less resource hungry than GNOME-monitor or other GUI monitors. On a system running normally, a GUI resource monitor may wind up consuming more CPU than anything else running, so many people still prefer top - or htop if they have multiple CPU’s.)
TY for the replys After running top it shows there is really nothing using anything i think
gconfd-2 8.9% cpu
dbus-daemon 5.3%
xorg 4.3%
gnome session 3.3 %
and a few more at 1% or less to zero
and tyavmia for any and all help
You system looks normal.
There are background jobs that kick on login and others that are periodically triggered by cron - they perform various maintenance tasks. So don’t be too worried if the system does it’s own thing occasionally (providing it eventually settles down). If I notice my system is grinding, I normally take a look using top or htop, assess what command is processing (perhaps use google), and if it seems reasonable I’ll just let it do its thing. In some cases I’ve disabled things I don’t need (such as desktop search indexing).
Thank you all very much