100% Single-Core Usage by "Interrupt"

[Joker41NAM]

UPDATE: Problem SOLVED; see my last post in thread.

For the past couple months, I've noticed that my #4 core is always running at near-100%. Process Explorer says I constantly have about 20% usage by Interrupts.

From other reading, I assumed that it meant I had a component in the system failing, and causing "noise." However, I've now removed everything I can, one at a time (all USB connections; PCI sound card; PCIe capture card). No removal helped at all. Only thing I haven't removed is graphics card, for obvious reasons.

Any suggestions appreciated.

Specs:
Win7x64 Home Premium
AMD Phenom II X4 965 Black Edition, 3.4 GHz quad-core
ASRock 980DE3 motherboard
16GB RAM
Sapphire Radeon HD 5830
Creative X-Fi Elite Pro sound card
Hauppauge HVR-2250 video capture card

 

[KKAW]

For the past couple months, I've noticed that my #4 core is always running at near-100%. Process Explorer says I constantly have about 20% usage by Interrupts.

From other reading, I assumed that it meant I had a component in the system failing, and causing "noise." However, I've now removed everything I can, one at a time (all USB connections; PCI sound card; PCIe capture card). No removal helped at all. Only thing I haven't removed is graphics card, for obvious reasons.

Any suggestions appreciated.

Specs:
Win7x64 Home Premium
AMD Phenom II X4 965 Black Edition, 3.4 GHz quad-core
ASRock 980DE3 motherboard
16GB RAM
Sapphire Radeon HD 5830
Creative X-Fi Elite Pro sound card
Hauppauge HVR-2250 video capture card

Use:
CCleaner to clean everything
Defraggler to defrag your hardrive
Malwarebytes to do a full scan on if anything is having issues

 

[Joker41NAM]

Use:
CCleaner to clean everything
Defraggler to defrag your hardrive
Malwarebytes to do a full scan on if anything is having issues

Main drive is SSD, so I skipped defragging.

CCleaner and Malwarebytes were run, without finding anything notable (I have Norton Security, and run its cleaner tools regularly).

Other suggestions?

 

[KKAW]

Use:
CCleaner to clean everything
Defraggler to defrag your hardrive
Malwarebytes to do a full scan on if anything is having issues

Main drive is SSD, so I skipped defragging.

CCleaner and Malwarebytes were run, without finding anything notable (I have Norton Security, and run its cleaner tools regularly).

Other suggestions?

If you have Norton on auto scan or something like that, you need to disable it on startup and disable the auto scan. Restart your PC and see if the problem is fixed. Norton may be using all that CPU.

If you are using the free version of Norton i would say Avast is a much better option.

 

[Joker41NAM]

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If you have Norton on auto scan or something like that, you need to disable it on startup and disable the auto scan. Restart your PC and see if the problem is fixed. Norton may be using all that CPU.

If you are using the free version of Norton i would say Avast is a much better option.

I'll give that a try tonight, but I don't see how Norton could cause the Interrupt process to max out (and stay maxed 24/7)

 

[IamTimTech]

I have Norton Security, and run its cleaner tools regularly

Norton itself is a problem. It's garbage.

Insure that you do not have any windows updates waiting to download/install

 

[Joker41NAM]

I have Norton Security, and run its cleaner tools regularly

Norton itself is a problem. It's garbage.

Insure that you do not have any windows updates waiting to download/install

As a computer security professional, and someone who's been using Norton since the bad old days when it did have major issues, I'll have to respectfully disagree.

No Windows Updates pending, and I've done 2 or 3 months' worth of patching since this problem started.

 

[IamTimTech]

I have Norton Security, and run its cleaner tools regularly

Norton itself is a problem. It's garbage.

Insure that you do not have any windows updates waiting to download/install

As a computer security professional, and someone who's been using Norton since the bad old days when it did have major issues, I'll have to respectfully disagree.

No Windows Updates pending, and I've done 2 or 3 months' worth of patching since this problem started.

We can agree to disagree, and I am ok with that. I am of the opinion the more lightweight and less "feature rich" a security program is the better. Norton, MCafee, Kaspersky, and the like are all antivirus "suites"; they have firewall, program updater, junk removers backup assistants and other "useful" tools that only end up hogging resources and slowing PC down. Malwarebytes, Vipre Security and Nod32 are just antivirus programs. They are lightweight and proficient. As an individual who repairs PC's daily, the majority of which being malware problems or "this doesn't open" problems I have found Norton can stop things from working properly and will return a clean scan when malwarebytes and others find malware. This is true of many of the bettter known antivirus programs though. This is how I arrived at my "norton is garbage" claim. It isn't just hearsay, it's from practical experience.

All of that said. I still TOTALLY respect that you like Norton. If it works for you then that's great! Different things work better for different people. I would still like to humbly suggest that you temporarily uninstall it (which is a huge hassle in and of itself) and try running Hitmanpro or malwarebytes to run a scan. I would be interested to see if it makes a difference.

 

[Joker41NAM]

Understood, and I appreciate the respect.

I may try uninstalling Norton, but I'm guessing it's not the issue.

From what I've been reading online, when Interrupt is eating up a lot of CPU consistently, the issue is normally in either the hardware itself, or a driver. I've got a idea to try and eliminate hardware (will try tonight).

Anyone have ideas on how to ID what driver would be causing the issue? Is there a way to ID what piece of hardware is causing the Interrupt process to run so hard?

 

[IamTimTech]

Well a simple way to make sure that all of your drivers are working properly is to right click My PC > Properties > Device Manager. If none of them have the little exclamation mark then there is no obvious culprit. You could use speccy to go find out which driver versions you have and then go search to see if there are any updated drivers available for your chipset or GPU. I am a little in the dark on this one and would be glad to see what the problem turns out to be.

 

[Joker41NAM]

Well a simple way to make sure that all of your drivers are working properly is to right click My PC > Properties > Device Manager. If none of them have the little exclamation mark then there is no obvious culprit. You could use speccy to go find out which driver versions you have and then go search to see if there are any updated drivers available for your chipset or GPU. I am a little in the dark on this one and would be glad to see what the problem turns out to be.

I already checked Device Manager, all clear.

I check for new drivers on all my parts every month, so I'm pretty sure I'm up to date, but I'll give Speccy a try tonight.

 

[IamTimTech]

Then you got me, let me know what you come up with!

 

[Joker41NAM]

Success!

I'm going to lay out my process, in hopes of helping future distressees.

I finally hit upon the right search term, and that led me to this page:
https://serverfault.com/questions/104131/how-can-i-find-out-what-is-causing-interrupts-on-windows

1) Download the Windows Assessment and Deployment Kit (make sure it covers your OS version), and install it.
HINT: it has a lot of modules you can install, but you only need the Windows Performance Toolkit; save yourself the download time

2) Open the Windows Performance Recorder
HINT: May have to reboot in here somewhere; it has to make sure anything using ETW is turned off

3) Expand the Options area, and uncheck everything except Resource Analysis->CPU Usage

4) Click Start, and let it run for long enough to get a good sample (I gave it 1 minute)

5) Click Save, and pick where you want to save it. When it's done saving, it'll ask if you want to look at it using Windows Performance Analyzer. You do.

6) Expand Computation->CPU Usage (Sampled)->DPC and ISR Usage by Module, Stack. Right-click it, and select Add Graph to Analysis View.

7) Expand the DPC or ISR, as appropriate. Expand it, and the item with the highest usage is probably your culprit.

In my case, this was AMD_SATA.SYS.

Now that I had something to work with, another quick web search showed that this is a not-uncommon issue with the latest SATA driver AMD has released for the SB700/710 southbridge. Forced Windows to use the previous version, and a reboot later I have my whole CPU back!

 

[IamTimTech]

That's very useful knowledge for the future, thank you sir.