I'm not sure I totally understand just what the process smss.exe does on my XP system, but I have noticed that at times, it is very CPU intensive and almost brings everything to a halt. Any suggestions on how to control this? Or, would create a lot of problems if I just changed the process priority level to "Idle"? I currently have it set to 'Below Normal'.
May be this help you: http://www.processlibrary.com/ - http://www.whatsrunning.net/whatsrunning/main.aspx
It's a Windows system process, and shouldn't be using a lot of CPU time. So there must be something wrong on your system. Also make sure that it's not malware trying to impersonate this process.