System Interrupts Huge CPU Usage

Anonymous
2009-11-18T12:06:50+00:00

Hi,

I have just recently installed Windows 7 Professional on my machine and I am having a problem with a process called System Interrupts using alot (25% approximately) of CPU.

I have tried several supposed fixes i have found here and on other forums but have not solved the issue.

I am at wits end.

http://i289.photobucket.com/albums/ll203/SK-illfull/systeminterrupts.jpg

Mobo: Gigabyte GA-EP35-DS3

Video Card: Nvidea 8800 GTX

Windows for home | Previous Windows versions | Windows update

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 No comments
Answer accepted by question author
Anonymous
2012-02-23T09:40:40+00:00

My computer got so slow that the mouse was slow and jerky and I had to reboot. System interrupts was at about 30% CPU time. My PC is now with 5 days uptime and the bug seems to have disappeared. The following solution seems to solve the issue :

  1. Right-click on the speaker icon
  2. Select playback devices
  3. Click on the speaker properties
  4. Go to the enhancements Tab
  5. Click Disable All Sound Effects
  6. Click OK. You're done!

The sound enhancements seem for some reason to cause the problem even when not used. So disable them following the procedure above. Good luck!

Was this answer helpful?

90+ people found this answer helpful.
0 comments No comments

122 additional answers

Sort by: Newest
  1. Anonymous
    2016-01-19T03:07:42+00:00

    Does it work in win/10

    Was this answer helpful?

    0 comments No comments
  2. Anonymous
    2015-10-01T16:44:38+00:00

    I am having this very same issue. Constant high CPU usage by System and System Interrupts. I have red through and tried most all "fixes" but none really seem to do anything.

    I am on a Surface 3 running Windows 10 Home.

    There are times that those two instances will be using 90-100% of my CPU while sitting idle at the desktop with nothing but task manager running. With System interrupts using upwards of 20-30% of my CPU and System using another 30-50%, the tablet becomes unusable. It only has 2GB of Ram and a tiny little CPU.

    I have checked for updates and always install them soon as they come out. LatencyMon points to ntoskrnl as having the highest DPC execution time. Depending on how long I let it run, ACPI.sys will jump up to top. I really don't know what any of that means to be honest. Hard Pagefault seems pretty high as well 17000.000+

    Was this answer helpful?

    0 comments No comments
  3. Anonymous
    2015-09-24T11:57:34+00:00

    I faced similar problem in windows 8.1 and then later in Windows 10. The problem is that my CPU, almost all the time, is clocking at about 3.5GHz or near to 3GHz (3GHz is max) with about constant 30-40% CPU usage all the time. This results in overheating of my laptop. From the task manager, it's clear that system.exe and system interrupt.exe processes are the culprits. Using sysinternals procexp tool, I traced down the thread that is overusing the CPU - ACPI, which is related to the power supply. A high system interrupt CPU usage means CPU is "interrupted" much more frequently than usual.

    This problem occurred in windows 8 and 8.1 after I upgraded my inbuilt HDD with a solid state drive. This HDD was used to replace the inbuilt DVD drive, so that I could use the enormous space of HDD. I feel this is entirely a software problem related to the power distribution that is not optimized for the hardware modification that I have done.

    There are several solutions suggested on the internet. These includes a faulty bluetooth driver, so it was suggested to disable it. But this didn't help me. I even tried upgrading to Windows 10, but this problem has still persisted. Can anyone suggest a troubleshooting guide to solve this problem?

    Appended below is a snapshot of what overuse of my CPU looks like on Window task manager.

    System specs -

    System Model Sony VAIO SVS13137PNB

    Processor Intel® Core™ i7-3540M CPU @ 3.00GHz, 3001 Mhz, 2 Core(s), 4 Logical Processor(s)

    Installed Physical Memory (RAM) 8.00 GB

    Total Virtual Memory 9.13 GB

    BIOS Mode UEFI

    Was this answer helpful?

    0 comments No comments
  4. Anonymous
    2015-09-23T17:14:40+00:00

    My computer got so slow that the mouse was slow and jerky and I had to reboot. System interrupts was at about 30% CPU time. My PC is now with 5 days uptime and the bug seems to have disappeared. The following solution seems to solve the issue :

    1. Right-click on the speaker icon
    2. Select playback devices
    3. Click on the speaker properties
    4. Go to the enhancements Tab
    5. Click Disable All Sound Effects
    6. Click OK. You're done!

    The sound enhancements seem for some reason to cause the problem even when not used. So disable them following the procedure above. Good luck!

    I've been battling this for a while. Then I remembered a similar issue when I first got windows7. SO i went into services and disable windows media sharing and the idle CPU usage went from 50-80 percent to 9 percent. Give it a try it sure helped 3 computers I have on the workbench this morning. Hope it helps others.

    Was this answer helpful?

    0 comments No comments