Surface Pro 3 High CPU load when idle, high system cpu load

Anonymous
2014-07-22T12:13:28+00:00

Has anyone else noticed that coming out of sleep or herniate results in unwarranted high cpu load from system interrupts? 

I have all the latest firmware and updates loaded. But using sleep even sometimes a cold boot I get this issue.

How can I fix this please. Its killing my battery life.

Surface | Surface Pro | Performance and maintenance

Locked Question. This question was migrated from the Microsoft Support Community. You can vote on whether it's helpful, but you can't add comments or replies or follow the question.

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Anonymous
2014-07-19T23:25:46+00:00

Hi jiachengguo,

Thank you for reaching out to the Microsoft Community! Sorry to know that you are facing battery issues with your new Surface Pro 3. I can see how concerning this is to you, so please know we will do our best to help and guide you in the right direction!

In order to better assist you, I will need to gather a few more details:

  • Have you made any changes to the power settings? And if so, what exact changes have you made?
  • Do you have any startup or background apps running?
  • Do you have a micro SD card inserted or any accessories and Bluetooth devices connected? If so, please disconnect or remove any external accessories and test it again.
  • Have you restarted the Surface and then set it to sleep after the restart? If not, please do so as well.
  • Have you tried resetting the power settings back to the default settings? If you haven't, here is how:
  1. From Desktop, swipe in from the right edge of the screen and open the Charms menu
  2. Select Settings
  3. Select Control Panel
  4. Select Power options
  5. Select Change plan settings
  6. Select Restore default settings for this plan
  7. Select Yes
  8. Restart your Surface

Additionally, for further reference, all available battery information and tips on how to make it last longer, can be found in the next support article that applies for Surface Pro 2 and Pro 3:

We hope this information proves useful. Please keep us posted!

We are here to help!

Best Wishes,

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Anonymous
2014-07-19T17:43:11+00:00

Oh!! I just checked it again as I wanted to make a screenshot and now it's working! I don't know what changed. The only thing I did was that I originally enabled Hyper-V but when it started interfering with my WiFi connectivity I disabled it again, so maybe that's what was necessary.. I used to have constant high "System Interrupts" process running, but disabling one by one I found out that an Adobe startup process was causing it, so I disabled it and it seems to have fixed the issue. Either way, thanks for your responses!

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Anonymous
2014-07-19T02:11:55+00:00

Dear Clare,

No, this is not what I was asking. Please refer to the original question.

Perhaps you may have something running in the background.

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  1. Anonymous
    2014-10-26T18:04:28+00:00

    It is 3 months from the original post and the problem is still unresolved. I got my SP3 (i7 256GB) a few weeks ago, and have had this problem since the night I bought it.

    Here are some of my observations, many are similar to what others have seen:

    1. I don't sleep/hibernate my SP3 very often, so mostly I see the problem after startup from shutdown.
    2. It never happens if I boot the SP3 undocked and un-connected to any USB device. But if I boot up docked or with a USB hub connected, it happens 90% of the time.
    3. Restart solves the problem, but that is not an acceptable solution.
    4. If I disable "Generic SuperSpeed USB Hub" and "Generic USB Hub" from Device Manager, wait a little bit, then re-enable them, it usually (not always) solves the problem until the next boot/wake/USB plug event.
    5. Instead of disabling USB Hubs, if I disable the "High Definition Audio Controller" it also stops the System + Interrupts, but when I re-enable it, they return to high CPU.
    6. Not related to microSD -- it happened before I ever plugged one in.

    My day-to-day method to deal with this:

    1. I installed a program that displays my CPU load (in number) as an icon in the system tray / notification area. If it shows 25-30%, I usually find System + Interrupt with high CPU in Task Manager.
    2. I wrote a startup script that looks at "System" process CPU usage, and if it crosses 15%, disables and re-enables the docking station USB Hubs. It works mostly fine; sometimes the processes return to high CPU after re-enabling, then I have to manually repeat the script until they don't climb up.

    The point I want to make is that although this is a manageable annoyance to a techie like me, for an average user it's a deal breaker. It's a deal breaker because if you don't do anything, it overheats; if you reboot right after booting up, that is ridiculous; if you go to Device Manager every time, that is very time consuming. Microsoft is trying to sell the SP3 as a productivity tool that IT departments can deploy along with the docking station, but docking the SP3 alone can cause this problem.

    When people around me ask about the SP3, I tell them "I like it a lot, but I do not recommend it because you will not be able to handle all the issues like I can -- these issues are not small, they will make you return it."

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  2. Anonymous
    2014-10-26T17:38:35+00:00

    I am having the same problems, even AFTER doing a complete re-installation of Windows. You can see everything that I have documented here:

    https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows8_1-performance/surface-pro-3-i5-256gb-high-cpu-usage-during-idle/af84e8d6-2aee-4279-95f1-6d85cde72a3d

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