Processor at 100%, no obvious cause

[JS]

You have what know as an "Interrupt Storm".
Some Video card can cause this, but it's not the only cause.

Check Device Manger.

Consider installing the most recent device drivers
available from the PC manufacture's web site
or for instance the Video Card manufacture's
web site.

Never download and install drivers from Microsoft's Update site.

 

[Gerry]

Alain

Did you restart the computer after changing the setting. On rebooting
had the service started?

Did you disable Automatic Update?

Hardware interupts are not something I have explored previously.
http://forum.sysinternals.com/printer_friendly_posts.asp?TID=7775

This forum might prove helpful

You have started to try to isolate the device by disabling through
Device Manager and observing for affect? That seems sensible.

Have you disconnected all peripherals except keyboard, mouse and
monitor?

What transfer modes are your drives. I would normally use HD Tune to
check drives

Try HD Tune only gives information and does not fix any
problems.

Download and run it and see what it turns up. You want HD Tune
(freeware) version 2.55 not HD Tune Pro (not Freeware) version 3.00.
http://www.hdtune.com/

Select the Info tabs and place the cursor on the drive under Drive
letter and then double click the two page icon ( copy to Clipboard )
and copy into a further message.

Select the Health tab and then double click the two page icon ( copy to
Clipboard ) and copy into a further message. Make sure you do a full
surface scan with HD Tune.


--


Hope this helps.

Gerry
~~~~
FCA
Stourport, England
Enquire, plan and execute
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

[Unknown]

Yep!

Thats an excellent suggestion, thanks. Process Explorer has shown me this
something called "Hardware Interrupts" is chewing the processor. Could
MSConfig find the culprit?

Thanks,
Alain

 

[Paul]

I do have some information from Process Explorer, (great suggestion,
thanks). The first two lines immediately tell me the problem (but not the
cause):

Process PID CPU Description Company Name
System Idle Process 0 18.18
Interrupts n/a 80.30 Hardware Interrupts

For some reason my system is spending a HUGE amount on time on "Hardware
Interrupts". I've checked Device Manager and everything looks kosher. Also,
this system is just one of many which are (supposed to be) identical,
hardware and software-wise.

Any idea how I find out what is causing the "Hardware Interrupts"?

Thanks,
Alain

Is it possible for you to give more information on what is
doing the computing here ?

You mention a touchscreen. Is that plugged into the computer
in question ? What interface does it use ?

The interrupts have to be coming from somewhere. Perhaps
removing hardware from the machine in question, will help
isolate the problem. Or swapping a different piece of hardware,
that doesn't work in quite the same way.

There are a couple obscure hardware chips, that have had
interrupt storms due to a flaw in the design. I doubt that
is the fault here, but to identify a source, you're going
to need to look more at the hardware details.

In terms of things coming from Windows Update, there was
an "Ideacom" driver offered a while back, and it was offered
to computers that don't have that hardware. It was offered
to me, but I didn't take the driver That is an example
of a "surprise package" you can get via WU. It was removed,
sometime after it started screwing up machines.

http://www.dslreports.com/forum/r21736236-XP-Pro-Windows-Update-install-Ideacom-software

If Windows had performance counters per IRQ, it would make
it a lot easier to track down. All I see here in my Performance
snapin, is an overall interrupt count.

Paul

 

[Johnw]

Alain Dekker formulated the question :

I have a PC running Windows XP, SP3. When the computer starts, I load Task
manager, and get about 2 minutes of the process:
wmiprvse.exe
running at 100% CPU usage.

Have a look in Device Manager & make sure PIO mode is not being used.