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

Anonymous

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.

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.

0 comments

Answer accepted by question author

Anonymous

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:

From Desktop, swipe in from the right edge of the screen and open the Charms menu
Select Settings
Select Control Panel
Select Power options
Select Change plan settings
Select Restore default settings for this plan
Select Yes
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:

Surface Pro battery and power

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

We are here to help!

Best Wishes,

0 comments

Answer accepted by question author

Anonymous

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!

0 comments

Answer accepted by question author

Anonymous

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.

0 comments

198 additional answers

Anonymous

2015-03-27T23:33:27+00:00

All this to use the SD card slot.

TLDR: One craptastic workaround thus far is to simply launch the SoundRecorder. (execute soundrecorder.exe or run it from the start screen).

Update: The problem has now returned and I'm still debugging it. So what I've found so far is that this is actually being caused by an interrupt storm via the ACPI.sys (Power Management) driver from the realtek audio chipset. Hence the audio driver looking like a possible solution before. So far my attempts to edit the acpi device config via the registry have been fruitless as the Realtek driver doesn't seem to respond to them at all. I did find that simply having the soundrecorder app open has a similar effect to playing sound. When I launch it, the interrupt cpu% drops off immediately and remains there while the app is running. Added to my startup and rebooted several times to see if it held and so far it is holding it at bay. Created a script to launch it as a hidden process but that causes other applications to lose focus sporadically, so that turned out not to be an admittedly slightly less craptastic option, but I tried :(

Edit/NOTE: While you may find the below informative, it did not resolve my issue as it resurfaced the next day. Leaving this here in case you're hoping that finding an updated driver will fix it as the below driver probably won't help you.

The same problem just befell me after adding in an sdxc card. Tracked the problem down using sysinternals tools and livekd, definitely the audio driver sending interrupts at the cpu like an uncapped fire hydrant. Great now what, MS doesn't have a newer driver but Realtek does. Version R2.75 of the 64bits Vista, Windows7, Windows8, Windows8.1 Driver. This package included version 6.0.1.7246 (2 months newer/minor build increment over Microsoft's). RelNotes didn't say anything outside of new driver customization options but gave it a shot anyway and it worked. Popped open livekd and verified the barrage was gone. Rolled back driver and it immediately came back. Updated back to this version and problem was gone again. Hopefully it stays that way. If the link below doesn't work, just go to www.realtek.com's download page and drill down from the menu on the left to download the package described above:

To drill down:

Computer Peripheral ICs -> PC Audio Codecs -> High Definition Audio Codecs -> Software

Direct link (that hopefully works for you :D)

http://www.realtek.com.tw/downloads/downloadsView.aspx?Langid=1&PNid=14&PFid=24&Level=4&Conn=3&DownTypeID=3&GetDown=false
Was this answer helpful?

0 comments No comments
Anonymous

2015-03-27T01:21:57+00:00

Hello!

The fan on my Surface Pro 3 will randomly start running very hard and the back of the screen will heat up considerably when nothing is running or when I'm simply browsing in Firefox.

When I launch Task Manager to see why it's running so hard, it will show up that my CPU is maxed out with 90-100% being used. Then within seconds, the percentage drops down to 5%. This happens every time the computer is running hard and I go to see what background program is responsible.

Can anyone explain how to fix this?
Was this answer helpful?

0 comments No comments