System Interrupts Huge CPU Usage

Hi all,

I joined this group specifically to post a solution that worked for me.

First off, brief specs:

SAGER NP5973 laptop (2008)

  Win7 32-bit with 4GB RAM (patched PAE kernel for 4GB memory access)

  NVIDIA Quadro FX1600M

  Intel 4965 AGN wireless adapter

I recently experienced a change in CPU behavior --> running at about 10-15% when IDLE. It turned out to be a high latency issue as detected by LatencyMon, which pointed to NDIS.SYS as the problem.

Long story short - I updated ALL hardware drivers, tried all Googled tricks and got NO result. The only thing that had any effect was to disable the AGN adapter --> then the CPU would drop back to "normal (0 to 1% at IDLE).

Solution: I remembered that I recently updated the NVIDIA drivers for my system. I was running Quadro drivers v195.62 and had upgraded to v311.35. I uninstalled the new driver and ran the Standard VGA adapter -> CPU went to normal (0 to 1% at IDLE). I re-installed the new NVIDIA driver (driver ONLY) and CPU went up to 15% at IDLE! I then re-installed the OLDER v195.62 NVIDIA driver and all went back to normal (0 to 1% at IDLE) ! I don't know why but in *my* case, although things pointed at the AGN drivers as being the problem, it was the combination with the new NVIDIA drivers that was truly at fault.

Take home message: try reverting to OLDer drivers (NVIDIA in my case). If your hardware is older then this may be an option (i.e. many driver updates only add support for newer hardware anyway - or some new feature not supported by older hardware).

Some additional notes

• I am running the latest Intel drivers (Wireless.v15.3.1)
• my system has a built-in Realtek audio device. I found the best version of the HDAC drivers is R2.42 --> the latest version (R2.70) would cause a hang on install.

Hope this helps someone cause it wasted my whole day :(

Cheers!

ADD more RAM....to your computer.

Max it out, in fact.

The CPU is working 'over-time', struggling to do EVERYTHING, the 'reason' behind the heavy CPU usage.

You don't have enough RAM...in computer.

And, it sounds like it can do with a 'good clean-out of the cookies as well. masses of 'cookies' will slow down even the fastest computer.

What is the rating...of the cPU?

1.6 GHz?

 With 1 gig of RAM,  500 Mbs of Video-RAM on the graphics-card?

I run a 3.0 Ghz Dual-core AMD CPU...in mine.

With 4 GIG of RAM.

With a 1 GIG Graphics-card.

It works just fine for me, the way I built it to be!

ADD more RAM....to your computer.

Max it out, in fact.

The CPU is working 'over-time', struggling to do EVERYTHING, the 'reason' behind the heavy CPU usage.

You don't have enough RAM...in computer.

And, it sounds like it can do with a 'good clean-out of the cookies as well. masses of 'cookies' will slow down even the fastest computer.

 

What is the rating...of the cPU?

1.6 GHz?

 With 1 gig of RAM,  500 Mbs of Video-RAM on the graphics-card?

 

I run a 3.0 Ghz Dual-core AMD CPU...in mine.

With 4 GIG of RAM.

With a 1 GIG Graphics-card.

It works just fine for me, the way I built it to be!

 

Same bug 8gb ram

Its ain't about RAM buddy. Its got something to do with the Processor or GPU while using Windows 7.