System Idle Process At 98 Percent CPU

After my computer finishes the boot process, I start Windows task manager and click on the processes tab. I scroll the listing and at the end I find "System Idle Process is cycling CPU usage at 25,44, and 98 percent within an approximate four second sequence. I do this because I normaly boot and try to run Outlook Express to no avail and I am trying to find out the problem. When I try to open Outlook Express I always get the following dialog. "Outlook Express could not be started because another instance of it is still running on your computer. Please log off of windows and then restart Outlook Express. If the problem persists, save your work and then restart your computer." I go to start and click on Log Off. I wait two minutes and try to start Outlook Express. I get the message the application failed to initialize as the workstation is shutting down! I try to restart the computer but it won't restart or even shut down. Any application I then try to start results in the message "the application failed to initialize as the workstation is shutting down!" I have to Power off the computer.