Netgear A6210 Excessive CPU Load

[umbradivisio]

Well.. I just bought a new WiFi Adapter due to my old one having juice spilled on it courtesy of my child.. I bought a Netgear A6210.. Upon installation I had a few issues with packet loss but have since gotten those sorted out.. Since then however I have noticed that my computer is suffering from unusually high load levels at idle, and from what little experience I have in the tech field, I have narrowed the culprit down to said WiFi Adapter.. When connected at idle, NT Kernel / System process spikes to 30-40%, when it should be sitting quietly at 0 like it used to on the old adapter with 0-5% cpu load at idle.. When disconnected from a network my cpu load stays right where it should at 0-5% with NT Kernel at 0.. I have tried updating to each of the 4 drivers available from netgear for their adapter with a fresh uninstall/restart install/restart for each one.. I have reached the limits of my tech/software knowledge and dont know if this is an unresolvable problem untill netgear gets off their lazy butts to fix this or if Im just missing something..

A smattering of info about my rig...

Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit SP1
AMD Athlon 64 X2 5000+ Black Edition @ Constant 43°C
8.00 GB Dual-Channel DDR2 @ 373MHz (5-5-5-15) - 4x2Gb Gskill PC2-6400 (400Mhz)
ASUSTeK Computer INC. CROSSHAIR (Socket AM2 ) @ Constant 40°C
1024MB ATI Radeon HD 4650 @ Constant 45°C
149GB Seagate ST3160812A ATA Device (PATA)
466GB Seagate ST350082 0AS SCSI Disk Device (ATA)

I appreciate any help you guys can give me.

 

[Ralston18]

Did you check the firmware installation?

May need an update there.

Go to Netgear's website and check.

Can you try the adapter on another computer - see if the problem follows the adapter.

Otherwise I would just consider exchanging the adapter for a replacement.

 

[umbradivisio]

I did indeed check to see if it has the same problem on a different computer.. it does not.. as to the firmware do you mean their software which I would call anything but firm?.. if so I have tried both with and without their POS software "netgear genie".. their drivers force its install even though you can download their supposedly "standalone" driver which should come without the CRAP software.. it's a bit trickier to install the driver without their bundled piece of .... but I found the drivers amidst the install extraction for each version of their driver and tried that way as well after canceling the install so I didn't get burdened with that poor excuse for excrement..

Aside from the fact that I tried it on another computer and it worked as one would expect.. remember how I said my kid was the reason for the last one breaking.. lol.. he's also the reason I can't RMA it should I need to due to his excitement over finding some extraordinarily interesting box to play with/destroy along with the receipt I had in said box.. so I'm stuck with it.. If you ment firmware in some other context please do elaborate..

 

[Ralston18]

Firmware in the conventional sense: that being the code installed in some onboard memory chip that can still be modified.

However if another computer did not have the problem then that would suggest some problem on the original computer.

May or may not be related to something in Netgear's drivers that impact one computer and not the other.

Regretfully, manufacturer's attempts to slip in addons only complicates things especially if the addon is buggy and/or otherwise poorly designed and executed. Not much can be done about that until enough end-users/consumers start choosing other products....

Since you have discovered that the adapter does work on another computer the job boils down to finding some relevant difference or differences between the two systems and the respective configurations.

Hopefully you can track down some possibilities by using Task Manager, Performance Manager, and even the Resource Manager.

Plus the total "posts" to date may provide some additional insight and elicit additional ideas and suggestions. That would be good.

 

[umbradivisio]

The 2 systems are so far apart its pretty funny actually.. The second computer that the adapter works perfectly on is an old hp laptop (even older than my 15 year old custom rig) with no comparable installed components besides they both have a powersource a motherboard and a keyboard.. Beyond that but sorry as I said previously Ive exhausted my limited knowledge of tech with this so Im still lost as to your meaning of firmware.. I know the chipset/motherboard has programming embedded in its chips, which controlled the hardwares physical properties like voltage and such, but I thought that was called bios (firmware being something installed on standalone devices/peripherals such as routers).. and all of the installed components in a computer (such as keyboards, network adapters and the like) ran off of drivers in the OS and didnt have chipsets that loaded their programming.. If you could possibly specify a target i could look into updating that might have said "firmware" that i could research and try and update?

As to things that might have "firmware" ive already got the most up to date firmware on my access point and my bios while 8 years old was the latest released before they stopped supporting my motheboard as far as i know and ive been unable to find ANY bios for the MB while looking through the interwebs after starting this post.. if it matters to help you designate somewhere to look.. my chipset is ASUSTEK Crosshair SPP190 (C51XE) Current bios is ASUS CROSSHAIR ACPI BIOS Revision 1103 from Pheonix Technologies

TskMgr just tells me that NT Kernel / System Process is using up 30% of my cpu load that the system idle process should be handling, PerfMon is showing 0 %interrupt time and parking status for the adapter during the load spikes but physical disk idle time is dropping to 96% during every other spike or so, ResMon shows the system process using steady ammounts of memory but has abnormially high threads at 123 (compared to other processes such as firefox next highest at 48 threads with lots of tabs open) and a avg cpu time over 60 seconds of 12% usage, and Resource Moniter shows net traffic is 10kbps and spikes about the same as the cpu load does just much lower on the max usage with the highest usage per second being svchost at 313 b/sec

 

[Ralston18]

Had to do some research....

Take a look at this link:

http://helpdeskgeek.com/windows-7/fix-nt-kernel-system-process-cpu-usage-in-windows-7/

Overall the problem seems to be related to a bad driver. Identifying that specific driver seems to be a bit involved. Will be looking into the use of xperf to identify the cause.

Not sure what else if anything to suggest at this point. Hopefully the details you have provided will elicit additional posts from someone else who recognizes what has been happening.