poor performance due to excessive cpu usage by hardware interrupts on 9300

Question

I've been randomly getting really choppy performance lately, the mouse will skip across the screen and cpu usage will spike to near 100%.   After downloading Sysinternal's Process Explorer I discovered it is hardware interrupts which are using up all this cpu time, but I have no idea how to trace what program or driver is triggering this. Even when doing absolutely nothing at all, the interrupts seem to hover at around 20% constantly.   I started by disabling every single hardware device which has the option for me to disable it in Device Manager. The only device which I couldnt disable was the hard drive and its corresponding IDE channel and a couple others like the PCI bus. I checked for IRQ conflicts as well, but that shouldnt matter after everything is disabled anyway. I also killed every single process which can be killed including explorer (except of course Process Explorer) and stopped every single service which has the option to be stopped in Service Manager.   After doing this, when sitting idle.. the cpu will go 100% system idle. But as soon as I start any application, the interrupt cpu usage will spike again.   I have an Inspiron 9300 running Windows XP Media Center Edition. I have the ATI Radeon x300, and recently upgraded the video BIOS and driver for this. I'm not sure if I was experiencing these problems before this BIOS update and am starting to wonder if this might be the cause? My guess is even though the device is disable in device manager, of course it still has to use the device for VGA mode. Or it could also be the hard drive accesses which are triggering the interrupts. I can't figure it out...   Has anyone else experienced this issue? Is there any way at all to be able to trace which interrupts are being triggered?   Please do not bother suggesting to me to just format or reinstall windows... I am not ready to try that yet and would rather try to figure out what is triggering this. If it really comes to that, I would rather install windows to a brand new hard drive and see if the problem persists. My guess right now is that it will, so I'm not ready to try that option either.   Any other suggestions will be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

dennispg · Answer

hmm, after struggling with this issue for over a month now, go figure... as soon as i make a post about it, i find out whats wrong on my own.   for those who are interested.. here is what was going on:   The DMA transfer mode of my primary IDE channel was reduced to PIO mode by windows. I remember now when this happened.. I was carrying my laptop in my bag still on while it was doing some intensive file transfers.. It shook, caused errors.. windows got mad. Apparently after a certain number of errors Windows automatically downgrades your transfer mode for you. Nice to know. After correcting this, my laptop is performing incredibly once again. I'm so happy. :smileyvery-happy:   Here are some links to where I found this all out: http://www.sysinternals.com/Forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=255&PN=1 http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;817472   Hope this helps anyone who runs into this. These threads sshould have been google searchable!!

ejn63 · Answer

Something caused that to happen - I would give the drive a thorough run with the Dell diagnostics. It could be you just received the two-minute warning that the drive's demise is imminent.

Don't just write off and ignore the warning.

dennispg · Answer

thanks for your concern. i did run a bunch of diagnostics after this happened and the drive checked out. i think i ended up with a bad sector or two. but its been working fine for months now since then. i just ran diagnostics again now to be sure, still checks out.   the moral.. dont shake your laptop while its doing stuff with your hard drive.   but like it i said, it has been working since then just very slow because of this transfer mode step down that windows gave me no warning about. now that this is corrected, the laptop performs beautifully once again.

ejn63 · Answer

If it ended up with 'a bad sector or two', it's not OK, and that's not normal. One day, sooner more likely than later, you'll boot to a blue screen and/or you'll see the drive regress to PIO mode again. The drive is on its way out - replace it.

dennispg · Answer

I ran Dell's Diagnostics plus Fujitsu's on the drive... both check out. I also used HD Tune so that I could copy the stats for you. Here are the S.M.A.R.T. values:

HD Tune: FUJITSU MHU2100AT Health

ID                              Current Worst    ThresholdData       Status
(01) Raw Read Error Rate        100      100      46       134697     Ok
(02) Throughput Performance     100      100      30       34144256   Ok
(03) Spin Up Time               100      100      25       1          Ok
(04) Start/Stop Count           100      100      0        141        Ok
(05) Reallocated Sector Count   100      100      24       0          Ok
(07) Seek Error Rate            100      55       47       1487       Ok
(08) Seek Time Performance      100      100      19       0          Ok
(09) Power On Hours Count       97       97       0        5973718    Ok
(0A) Spin Retry Count           100      100      20       0          Ok
(0C) Power Cycle Count          100      100      0        141        Ok
(C0) Power Off Retract Count    100      100      0        12         Ok
(C1) Load Cycle Count           98       98       0        29974      Ok
(C2) Temperature                100      100      0        1114151    Ok
(C3) Hardware ECC Recovered     100      100      0        8765       Ok
(C4) Reallocated Event Count    100      100      0        282984448 Ok
(C5) Current Pending Sector     100      100      0        0          Ok
(C6) Offline Uncorrectable      99       99       0        2          Ok
(C7) Ultra DMA CRC Error Count 200      200      0        0          Ok
(C8) Write Error Rate           100      89       60       2187       Ok
(CB) (unknown attribute)        100      100      0        20643804   Ok

Power On Time : 5973718
Health Status : Ok

And here is the result of the surface scan:

I was wrong, I dont have any bad sectors. Is this enough to convince you that my drive is ok?

HTT Good HT Bad · Answer

convinces me, any ways i had an old 1.2 GB HD that i got just to hold files, i found it in 2001 and it had like 8 bad sectors when i found it and in 2005 it is still going strong with only 8 error, but i did have another old 1.0GB HD they was error free than 1 day an error came up and 3 days later that whole HD was just one big error

GreyMack · Answer

Failure modes and characteristics vary. It is somewhat common for a drive experiencing bad sectors to continuously degrade, but that may be due to head-to-surface contact damage and loose particulate contamination, causing further damage and contamination. I have also occasionally suspected platter surface deterioration not caused by head-to-surface contact, but yielding similar symptoms. Then again, the absence of any obvious external cause of head-to-surface contact may not necessarily exclude it.

GM

HTT Good HT Bad · Answer

The 1 GB drive i was talking about was old and it jst started getting errors and more errors until is usable size was about 50MBs

GreyMack · Answer

Yeah, it was symptoms like that which caused me to speculate that spontaneous surface deterioration was an occasional factor with some drives. Some brands/models may have had better chemistry than others, 'cause some old drives seem to just keep on chugglin'.

GM

HTT Good HT Bad · Answer

the 1.2 GB is an old seagate medalist and the 1.0 GB harddrive that is dead is a Western Digital

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poor performance due to excessive cpu usage by hardware interrupts on 9300

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