I've noticed this thing in Windows Task Manager called "System Idle Process" and I wondered if anyone knows why it's necessary. I would have thought that the CPU could just take a break if there was nothing going on, but apparently I thought wrong.

See HERE for the low down on the system idle process.

Regards Howard

Ending this prosses will cause your computer to shutdown, not immidately, but once it is ended, a message somes up saying you have 60 secs to close all your programs and it them shutsdown.

Its a vital prosses that microsoft systems require to run.

On my computer, attempting to end System idle process invokes a message box stating that the operation could not be completed since it is not valid for that process.

Were you thinking of svchost.exe? The shutdown can be aborted by going to Start > Run, typing in shutdown.exe -a, and pressing enter.

NO, one of my computers, (win98) when i sucessfully end it the diolog box comes up and tells me that 60 secs to close all your programs and it them shutsdown. It maybe because the system is so old so things run differently.

PS: this is ONE of my computers, my latest OS is Win vista home version.
I use win98 to post.