Disabling System Interrupts in Windows 7 - (high CPU usage, semi solved)

06
2014-04
  • Erofire

    I know the system interrupts topic is pretty common with varying solutions but I had a question about how to implement a solution in Windows 7 the way I did in Ubuntu 12.04.

    Background:

    • Bought an ASUS K53SV model laptop in May 2011 and it worked great until a couple of months ago when the CPU started to act up.
    • After using a Latency checker, found the culprit was ACPI.sys
    • Tried a number of solutions until the computer became unusable
    • Installed Ubuntu 12.04 over everything
    • Problem persisted with kworker taking up CPU
    • Fixed the issue by following the instructions here
    • GPE04 was acting up so I disabled it and things were back to normal

    TLDR:

    I need to have Windows 7 running for work though and I was wondering if there was a way to find the specific interrupt and disable it the same way I did in Ubuntu.

    I have a suspicion that the interrupts are caused by the dedicated NVidia 540M GPU since I had trouble getting it to work in Ubuntu and video crashes became more common around the time the issues first started. I've tried almost everything on the web and the issue persists and I imagine it's something hardware related.

    EDIT:

    I've already tried reinstalling Windows, fan speed and updating the BIOS. I'm asking more about disabling interrupts in Windows 7, I've accepted that the main problem is not solveable.

    • Answers
  • Canadian Luke

    I used to have the same issue, although my notebook (Asus K53SC) was about 20 months old when the problem arose. Symptoms were the same: ACPI interrupts eating one CPU at 100%, the fan is constantly running at what sounds like maximum speed. I've installed Ubuntu and the problem was there too (GPE06 in my case).

    The root cause of the problem was... dust! I've disassembled and cleaned my notebook and interrupts are gone both in Windows and Ubuntu.

    Look at what I found after disassembly: enter image description here

    Compare to cleaned: enter image description here

    Disassembly guide

  • magicandre1981

    I saw other users with an ASUS laptop and the ACPI.sys DPC issue is caused by CPU throttling to avoid overheating.

    Use Speedfan to increase the CPU cooler fan speed. Also call the ASUS support for an updated BIOS which includes a better fan management.


    • Related Question

    cpu - System will only boot into a Live CD with core disabled in BIOS and ACPI off
  • CookieOfFortune

    I have a system that was running a Q6600 and Windows 7 RC. It crashed last night into a BSOD with a MACHINE_CHECK_EXCEPTION. Now it does that every time it boots into Windows.

    I tried using my Ubuntu Live CD, but the kernel would error out, the stack trace showed something along the linse of "Can not synchronized to one of the CPUs".

    Working from this, I enabled the "Limit CPU to 3 cores" option in my BIOS and tried again. This time, it seemed to have died after an ACPI call, so I disabled that during the boot and now it is running from the Ubuntu Live CD, showing 2 cores.

    Does anyone here think I have any hope or is it simply a CPU waiting to die?

    EDIT: 1 core now.


    • Related Answers
  • techie007

    Unfortunately MACHINE_CHECK_EXCEPTION is almost always a hardware fault, and usually points to a failing CPU or motherboard. These may be failing due to power supply failures/under-power as well.

    Based on the fact you're having trouble booting Linux as well it's not going to be a driver issue.

    If you have any tweaked setting in your BIOS (i.e.: you're overclocking) turn it all back to defaults. If it still does it, you're probably going to have to start swapping new hardware to identify the culprit.