Interesting. Not hyperthreaded or SMP, are you?

Server OSs tend to have different priorities. Open System Properties/Advanced/Performance Settings/Advanced and see how your system is set up.

Also, open Task Manager, and sort by CPU then give us an idea of what is using most time (the top few processes, with average percentages).

Rossetta is there at 97%

and then SQL Server SWdoctor and explorer.

Just every now and again System Idle hogs the cpu

bizzarre

Without understanding much about it, it kinda sounds like a memory/paging issue. Is there enough free memory? Is the swap file big enough? could there be some disk errors in the middle of the swap file...(somebody is halting the Rosetta task for some reason and system idle consequently soaks it up.... likey a disk issue of some sort?)

Thanks Chaps you have pointed me in the right direction

The Webserver has 2 sticks of 256Mb on a nForce2 Mobo that borrows some memory for the onboard graphics. It's sits on top of a Welsh dresser.

Yesterday I flipped out one of the nice corsair sticks and used it to diagnose another faulty board I have. All this is working over head height.

After giving up on the other board I fitted it back in with the nice click click you get with memory and rebooted the server.

I thought it was running OK but you got me thinking. I ran the performance monitor and that disk is thrashing away.

I checked the front of the system tabs and there it was 240Mb Memory fitted (16Mb stolen for graphics)

It wasn't the stick I put back but the one next to it which had had it's extractor moved when I took out the original stick aarrgghh


496Mb of Ram now - it makes all the difference

Just goes to show how much mem you need for FAAH. It didn't show nearly as much with Rossetta.

Thanks for your help

Dave