New dual core computer build. High CPU usage on idle.

[Rubber Bullets]

Hi,

I have just built a new PC for Sharon, parts as follows.

1 x Intel Pentium Dual Core E2180 2.0GHz (Retail 775)
1 x MSI GeForce 8600GT 512MB PCI-E
1 x Corsair 2GB PC2-4200 Value Select (2x1GB)
1 x 250Gb Western Digital Caviar SE SATA 8MB
1 x Nexus LXM-8200 Intel 775 CPU Cooler
1 x MSI PT890 Neo-V Socket 775 MOTHERBOARD

All has gone well, into the old case with the old DVD drive.

The install of WinXP Pro has also gone very smoothly (much more so than my builds usually go!) but now I seem to have a strange problem.

If I go into task manager it seems that 1 core is constantly running at around 60-80% and the other at a more common 1-5%. I can't find a single thing that is running, I've even turned off all the anti virus etc. Processes are showing system idle at 98-99% again as usual.

Any ideas?

Many thanks

RB

 

[Mabs]

windows will run on one core , other stuff can run on the other

you can bring task manager up, right click a program, and "set affinity" to tell it which core to run on

 

[Rubber Bullets]

Thanks Mabs, I didn't know this. I don't think it'll help with my problem though, I'm sorry I didn't make myself clear

My own desktop and laptop are both dual core and when I go to task manager from the desktop, with nothing else running, on either machine CPU usage is reported as 0-5% each has a graph that bumps along the bottom until I open any other application.

On the new PC as soon as I open task manager the CPU usage spikes to virtually 100% and then idles along at 30-40% though the 2 graphs show that it is just one core doing all the work, with the other bumping along the bottom just like my other machines.

Since my original post I have updates the BIOS and the VIA chipset drivers, but neither has had any effect whatsoever.

Thanks again

RB

 

[Cromcruaich]

Surely when you ctrl-alt-delete and look at the processes list it tells you what is utilising the cpu?

 

[Mabs]

what else have you got running out of interest ?

there are a few things, i think DAoC was one of the first offenders, whereby it will expand into the space. so if there is nothing else using up the extra, say, 70% cpu, it will earmark it for itself, and tho its not technically using it, its listed as being used . not really sure how it works on a technical level, but sure someone else can help you with more detail

 

[Cyradix]

Did you do a windowsupdate to get all the latest patches?

A while back a few pc's at work had like 80-90% cpu usage while idle. This was caused by the buggy WUA (windows update agent) running in the background.

If you haven't done so already install the latest version. You can find it over here : A new version of the Windows Update offline scan file is available (or via windowsupdate itself, but it might take a while to scan if you are still on the old version)

 

[Rubber Bullets]

Surely when you ctrl-alt-delete and look at the processes list it tells you what is utilising the cpu?

That's the bizarre thing Crom, it says System Idle is using 98-99%!

Mabs, there is very little to run at all, it was a clean install that day and I had put very little on yet.

Cyradix, this sounds hopeful. I'll give it a go tomorrow, thanks. The WinXP disc I have includes SP2, but the PC did do a lot of updating in the first few hours, I really hope this is the answer.

RB

 

[Rubber Bullets]

Hi,

I tried this but sadly no change. I have let Windows update pretty much everything it can.

Even with virtually nothing running it is still showing 35-45% CPU usage at all times, with just the one core doing all the work. System idle is still showing at 99% too.

Ultimately could this be a hardware fault? Faulty mobo or CPU? Maybe even power supply, though i guess from Krytens non show in this thread this is unlikely.

Should I go back to Aria and ask their opinion?

RB

 

[Rubber Bullets]

OK, I've done a bit more digging around and now at least know what is causing the problem (kind of) but am not sure what to do next.

I downloaded a piece of software called Process Explorer, that basically does what Task manager does but a bit more. This tells me that the the 40 odd percent of the CPU is constantly being used by hardware interrupts.

So that's good, I'm getting somewhere, but I can't find anything that can explain really simply what hardware interrupts are, nor what I can do next to stop them using almost half my CPU power!

Can anyone help?

RB

 

[inactionman]

Sounds like faulty hardware, I'd suspect the disk or the motherboard.

 

[Embattle]

hardware interrupt Definition

While it could well be a hardware fault you could try a small rebuild and make sure everything is firmly in place and reinstall windows, if that doesn't work you might be able to use Process Explorer to find out what is the item causing the high level of inters...although not having used it I'm not sure

 

[Rubber Bullets]

Thanks Embattle,
Some of the definitions I found got very complex very quickly.

I can't find a way to get Process Explorer to tell me what is causing these interrupts, just that they are happening. I'll try the rebuild thing as soon as I get the chance, in the meantime I guess that the PC is doing what Sharon needs it to.

RB

 

[Mabs]

silly question, but before you apply screwdriver to case.. are you sure the HARDWARE is nacked, and not the software that is claiming the hardware is nacked ?

 

[Rubber Bullets]

There are no silly questions Mabs, and no I am not sure of anything. I have absolutely no idea what is causing this problem.

I have no reason to to disbelieve the results that Process Explorer gives though. task manager tells me that system idle is using 99% of my CPU, but it's own graphs show that the CPU is working at 40%. That seems unbelievable. At least with this other program the maths adds up!

As to the remedy, I have no idea whether a rebuild will do anything, but can it do any harm to swap out the SATA and IDE cables? Or try them in different sockets? I admit I am not very confident of the results, but before I go back to the retailer I guess I can give it a try.

RB

 

[Cromcruaich]

When it says its interupts causing it - does it give any other information - like on what IRQ the interupts are coming from? If so using device manager you could tie it up to devices on that irq, then (possibly) disable them and see if it changes.

If you havent got this information you could disable devices (ide/sata depending on what disk you installed on, parallel,serial,usb,sound,wireless and wired networking etc) one by one and see if doing that lets you narrow down a culprit. Might get stuck if its an essential system device thats causing it but might be a way forward.

Thing is that before you can RMA anything you gotta be sure that its faulty - what a bugger of a problem.

 

[inactionman]

What's your linux knowledge like? You should be able to download a live cd that could tell you more, if you know how to use it (I'm not that good to be able to tell you).

 

[Gahn]

Did you upgraded all the drivers to solid and or latest releases? Some faulty/not optimized driver can cause that (Chipset Drivers, Usb ones, Network etc).

 

[mumakil]

Hello, I'm new in the forums, just joined in because I have the same problem and couldn't find an answer anywhere...

I have just bought a new laptop (Brazilian brand - Amazon PC) with Dual Core 2.0Ghz, Geforce 8400M G, 2GM RAM and Vista Home Premium.

Since day one the pc is showing the same problem, about 25% of the core 0 is always in use and the other core is normal/idle.

Whenever I run task manager, the core 0 shows to be running at 25%, but no processes are using it! System Idle is about 98% and processes like svchost.exe and explorer.exe show up using 1% to 2% sometimes.

I'm going crazy and thought it was Vista's fault, but you guys are having the same problem with XP...

After all, I see no performance problems, I'm even running SONAR 7 through Edirol's PCR-1 sound controller to record music and it runs flawlessly, Vegas 8.0 runs great, even some heavy 3D games do run very well, so there is no bottleneck happening...

I'm waiting for Vista's SP1 (which promises performance improvements) to be available to me to see if anything changes. I'll post further if I find the cause, and especially, the solution.

Cheers,

mumakil

 

[Kryten]

Being perfectly blunt, it's 100% normal.
Don't forget that the intel dual cores that are not Core2Duo are not as fast as you'd think anyway. It's just normal idling procedure.

 

[dysfunction]

I thought SP1 was already released by way of general windows updates? Am I wrong?

 

[inactionman]

Yeah, or you can standalone download it. It's rather large though.

 

[dysfunction]

I can't tell if I have it or not. It certainly doesn't say anywhere on the updates I have and I have installed all of them...

 

[inactionman]

Right-click on 'My Computer' and it should say there if you have service pack 1 or not.

 

[Cromcruaich]

Being perfectly blunt, it's 100% normal.
Don't forget that the intel dual cores that are not Core2Duo are not as fast as you'd think anyway. It's just normal idling procedure.

Well im not at all convinced that is correct, take any single core cpu, even a 5 year old one running whatever os you like and it wont show 25% cpu usage when idle.

 

[mumakil]

temporary solution

Hi everyone,

Well, I found the cause of the problem and a temporary solution:

Upon using Process Explorer software, I found that the culprit was "Hardware Interrupts", which were using about 25% of core 0 all the time.

After some research on the net, I found lots of people with the same problem, in different platforms (XP, Vista, Linux) but nobody could determine exactly what to do to solve it.

I also noted that faulty hardware (or a misconnected board such as video or audio cards) could cause that, or eventually some IDE Controllers.

So the first step was to ascertain if it was the hardware or not, so I booted in Safe Mode and 'voila!': both cores were in normal activity.

Upon booting up in normal mode, the problem showed up again...

So I opened Device Manager and stopped devices one by one and I ended up solving the problem by disabling the "A33A0483 IDE Controller" under "Storage Controllers". The processor is finally working normally! And the PC, which I already thought was OK, became much faster and responsive, including in booting up and shutting down.

The only thing is that I'm not sure what is this controller used for, as my HD and DVD (both IDE devices installed in my system) are still working perfectly.

Maybe it controls external drives, so does anyone know what is it used for? Can I leave it disabled without problems in the future?

PS: Regarding Vista SP1, I believe is is available for the english version, in Brazil it will be available in "mid April", I believe it also applies for other countries versions.

 

[Rubber Bullets]

Being perfectly blunt, it's 100% normal.
Don't forget that the intel dual cores that are not Core2Duo are not as fast as you'd think anyway. It's just normal idling procedure.

Hi Kryten,

Is this in answer to me? I am pretty certain that it is not normal, I now have 3 dual core machines, and the other 2 do nothing like this.

I am pretty sure that one core shouldn't be running at a pretty constant 80%, simply on hardware interrupts.

RB

 

[Kryten]

Ah, sorry RB, my mistake - for some reason I had thought 20% of one of the cores. Only have brief access to the Net from work so don't have much time to read things properly

I've heard about some IDE controllers causing issues although nothing about hardware interrupts as such - a previous performance issue on a Core2Duo e6300 on another machine I had (spare DVD de/encoder) due to the VIA chipset in use. A driver and firmware update had to be done to repair that, however that bears little to no relevance here it would seem.

I know Vista does tend to use dual core systems slightly different and I have noticed slightly differing behaviours on different systems under idling, with some background processes defaulting to a particular core (anti virus, firewall and windows defender quite often) but I've not seen enough of them to confirm if that's a feature or otherwise; hence my original comment.

 

[mumakil]

Just as an update, I found out that the IDE Controller which was causing the hardware interrupts/constant cpu usage on my laptop is in fact the controller used by Daemon Tools Lite 4.12.3; whenever it is disabled, Daemon Tools does not even start up.

But I'm not sure if Daemon installed it (maybe SPTD 1.56?) or if it was already there (installed by Vista), and I didn't mind uninstalling DTools, as I almost never use it, so I'll keep it disabled and if I need Daemon I can enable it, use the virtual drive and disable afterwards.

 

[TdC]

aha, so your problem came from a software construct?

I run VMware on Vista Ultimate 64b, and that also creates several virtual devices, though none of that causes any problems on my quad like those you experienced.

 

[Kryten]

Daemon tools always used to create a hell of a lot of issues with Vista here, so stopped using it. I had similar problems due to that "legal rootkit" (can't remember the name now) that came on some softwares (TrackMania Nations) which used virtual device drivers and played havoc