Unlisted process using major percentage of cpu

[NP3]

I noticed my CPU time was running between 50% and 100% according to my menubar monitor while I was just running Safari & Adium.

Activity Monitor confused me more. It shows User percentage as 45% (the colored options at the bottom), while the list view showing all processes only has a highest value of 3%. (Often it was 90 and 3ish) While everything is fluctuating, the menubar monitor & User percentage would match.

(Act. monitor refresh set to normal 2 seconds)

My boot time was on 10 hours, and I had just run a complete Onyx run 3 days beforehand. (and no, spotlight wasn't indexing) No applications had been force quit either. I'm behind a software & hardware firewall.

Whats going on here? It stopped after I logged out and back in...and this is the second time its happened.

 

[gauchogolfer]

What was the process ID of the offending application?

 

[NP3]

What was the process ID of the offending application?

Nothing is listed in Activity Monitor as offending, so I don't know. (forgot to try Terminal)

 

[gauchogolfer]

Nothing is listed in Activity Monitor as offending, so I don't know. (forgot to try Terminal)

If you display all processes in AM, then sort by CPU usage, the worst contributor should be at the top.

 

[NP3]

If you display all processes in AM, then sort by CPU usage, the worst contributor should be at the top.

I took screenshots of it (can't figure out how to put them here)

All Processes was selected. And Sorted by CPU%. Thus my confusion.

The worst on top is Activity Monitor with 3.2%.