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
    2015-09-10T23:29:50+00:00

    After removing microSD, you have to restart at least once. Whatever is causing problem seem to be happening at kernel level, and fastboot saves kernel data in SSD. So, it won't take effect until restart.

    Also try restarting after disabling fastboot, then shutdown and turn on again. I don't remember which steps I took, but this may be worth a try.

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  2. Anonymous
    2015-09-10T22:41:49+00:00

    I'd like to add my own experience here to this list. I recently purchased a Surface Pro 3 which shipped with Windows 10 and have used it for several weeks without incident. Over this past weekend I received a number of peripherals that I'd ordered and installed them and when I returned to school on Tuesday I began to experience the problems that have been described here. The peripherals I installed were:

    SanDisk 128GB microSD card

    SanDisk 64GB thumb drive (not permanently connected, just for file portability)

    Vantec 10 port USB 3.0 hub

    Microsoft Natural Keyboard 4000

    Logitech G700s mouse

    IOGear USB 3.0 Ethernet adapter

    Pioneer USB 3.0 External BluRay Burner

    Previously I've been using a Vantec USB 2.0 external hard drive enclosure (forget what drive I put inside) and now I've got it connected through the 10 port hub as well.

    I tried the other suggestions I've found here and elsewhere and my findings were this:

    • Removing the microSD card didn't make a difference (though I didn't try restarting it with the card removed or deleting the drivers)
    • Deactivating Fast Boot and choosing shut down (not restart) and then turning it back on didn't make a difference
    • Turning on the microphone as described above and below DID fix the problem though with the associated 2-3% drain from the Windows Audio Device Graph Isolation process so I didn't keep using this solution.
    • Uninstalling the audio drivers as described elsewhere DID fix the problem though I haven't been through a full update cycle so I'm expecting the problem to recur after the next update.

    At this point my plan is to wait for another cycle of updates and see if the problem returns after that. If/when it does I'll probably spend a bit more time investigating the involvement of the SD card reader driver but having the SD card installed is pretty important to me (having expandable storage was one of the reasons I chose this device) so I don't know what I'll do if that ends up being the issue. I definitely get the feeling that the problem is a driver conflict with one of the devices in the list above. If anyone else's problems correlate to something on that list of peripherals I'd love to hear about it.

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