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
    2016-02-05T14:01:45+00:00

    I tried all of the fixes in this thread and nothing worked.  What I did find is that it is definitely my docking station causing the problem on start up.   If I undock, startup, then close the wings on the docking station when the sign in screen appears everything works just fine....it runs cool with system interrupts and compressed memory running at 0.1% each.  I have do the same thing if I am waking from hibernation or sleep as well.

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  2. Anonymous
    2015-11-08T04:35:44+00:00

    I found a potential cause and hardware solution.

    Same problem: Watching a video on YouTube after a fresh boot up would cause the System and System Interrupt processes to collectively use approx 20-25% of the CPU.  Fan would go crazy with Chrome and Firefox and to a lesser extent with Edge.  I was able to replicate the problem. 

    My setup: SP3 connected to:

    1. VGA monitor, and
    2. USB hub (with own power supply) with two devices: 
      • Keyboard/mouse receiver
      • USB speakers (with own power supply)

    Solution:

    I swapped out my USB 3.0 hub with a USB 2.0 hub. After doing that, the problem has not occurred.   As others have noted, the issue does seem related to the Realtek audio driver.  I'm not a technical person but my guess is that there is a problem with how Windows 10 is outputting audio and switching from the Realtek audio driver to the driver for my USB speakers.  Not sure what role the USB hub plays in all this. 

    Additional info:

    USB speakers are Bose Companion 5

    When they were plugged into a USB 3.0 hub, they would occasionally emit a buzzing noise during startup.  They no longer do that with the USB 2.0 hub.

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