Thursday, March 30, 2006

Lousy Performance, High Hardware Interrupt Usage

My system has been dog doo slow since I did a reinstall a couple weeks back.  Process Explorer was showing some outrageous hardware interrupt rates, on occasion as high as 50% and regularly at 20%.
I’d let it roll for a couple weeks simply because it was low on my frustration list and I was trying to roll through other things.  It finally pissed me off enough tonight that I spent some time nailing it down.  Turns out ATA/IDE controllers will often revert back to PIO mode instead of Ultra-DMA.  (MS KB article on the problem here.)
Check the problem by examining the controller’s Primary and Secondary IDE settings: Device Manager -> IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers -> Primary or Secondary IDE Channel -> Properties -> Advanced Settings.  Look at the Current Transfer Mode field.  If it’s “PIO” then it’s a FUBAR PITA and you’ll need to uninstall the driver, reboot and let XP do its magic reinstall. 
Sucky, but fixable.  Now I’ve got my shiny system back shiny again.
Now Playing: Olu Dara — In The World: From Natchez to New York.  Wow, jazzy/bluesy/folksy goodness.  Amazing clarity, terrific vocals, killer guitar and harmonies.

240 comments:

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Anonymous said...

Hi,
Will this work for windows 7 ???

rpr said...

On an older PC (MB: Intel D845PESV) with MS Windows XP Pro. SP3 I noticed that the primary IDE channel switched to PIO mode.

After uninstalling the driver Windows was not able to start - it restarted at booting to normal or safe mode - and I had to revert it to last known good configuration.

Then I found another page on this problem. Among others it mentioned Intel Application Accelerator. After uninstalling it I was able to fix the transfer mode using the http://winhlp.com/tools/resetdma.vbs script.

Anonymous said...

thanks you so much,,
you are really genius!!!!
that was unbelieveable.

Bernardo Rosello said...

Wow. This is an excellent post. What amazes me is how this was posted on 2006 and to this day it keeps helping people with this issue. Thanks a lot - Puerto Rico

Anonymous said...

Yeah, Bada Bing! That did it. Thanks!

brablc said...

This fixes problem even without reboot on Acer Aspire T136, thanks Green_Cabbage!

Go to "Device Manager" >> "System Devices" >> and disable "Microsoft UAA Bus Driver for High Definition Audio"

ragz4ragz said...

Man you are my angel...I seriously dint wanted to format my system. And your reply helped me...I thank google also for getting me to your thread....

Anonymous said...

Dude you rock!!!! i was bracing myself for a Win Xp reinstall which is a pain in the ar** when you have sp1 as your original. Following your simple steps lead me straight to the problem and a two min fix!!!!

Unknown said...

Thanks man. Thanks a lot. It fixed my problem.
But, it keeps coming back over and over, and more often...
This is really annoying, but at least i can fix it for a few days/weeks.

Is there any way i can fix the whole problem?

JoeShmo said...

Thank you! Had this problem on a WinXP SP3 machine and this solved it.

John Chang said...

This has got to be a prime reason why Windows slows down with time. I'm sure that this would resurrect a very high percentage of dog-slow machines running Windows. Most people don't want to even think about reinstalling the OS. Heck, even knowledgeable folks dread it if they haven't done it before.

How did you figure this out?!

Nick Chapman said...

Woah. The comments say it all.

This is still a relevant article!

This is such a great find. I had a few errors in my event viewer...but they weren't the cause of the problem. This was. Glad 'Hardware Interrupts high cpu usage' found this article quickly.

You should collect on some of those pint offers; or at least fake it and link to a paypal donations page.

Much appreciated!

Dave W said...

Thank you sir! 5 years on and your tip still works on XP with latest updates! Only thought of checking Process Explorer today and it led me straight here! I wonder how long I've been putting up with half a CPU for!

Anonymous said...

Just to add my voice: Many thanks for posting this simple fix to a mind-boggling frustrating problem!

laptoprepairexperts said...

very nice topic.. i hav another problem also. can any body tell me how will i find that either my RAM is defected or not.

Anonymous said...

I found this page and checked but it was set to dma - after half day of further reading - found I had 2 instances of the primary IDE - deleted the one with pio and all is well - Thanks a bunch!

Anonymous said...

Here it is 5 years after the original blog and this is still a relatively unknown fix by tech support people. Now my grandkids can play games again and I dusted my old laptop off, fixed same problem on that one after thinking it was worn out. You sir are a Godsend.

Anonymous said...

Just a follow up note - this situation is apparently linked to some hardware malfunction. In my case when I rebooted my DVD player, which hasn't been working up to snuff but was shown as working properly in Device Manager, was automatically reinstalled also. Everything running like a scared rabbit now.

Lindsay Rosenwald said...

Lindsay
Rosenwald
: Founder of Paramount Capital Asset Management

Laptop Repair said...

Nice work dear.


Thanks for sharing this. Also waiting for your next post.

HP Laptop Repair said...

This is really interesting.

Thanks for this post.

Misanthropy said...

YOU'VE DONE IT! YES! YEEESSSSS!
I spent FOREVER trying to figure this out!
I was worried something was wrong with my new ram or harddrive!
This was a place I would have never thought to check!
THANK YOU SO MUCH!

Anonymous said...

THNX This soulution solved my problem.

/Johan from Sweden

Anonymous said...

I got the same problem with CRC error and PIO mode after I reinstall XP. Repair it it Seagate Seatools but the problem still remain. I thought it was problem with my install.

Your tips did the trick. Thanks very much.

Anonymous said...

Thank you very much sir.
My problem sorted out.

Anonymous said...

THANK YOU for posting this article. My laptop began to tank several months ago and I had no earthly idea why. After finally investigating the issue and narrowing it down to hardware interrupts, I was still stumped, finding many various message boards with a bunch of people giving advice that didn't work. Your fix was straightforward and precise. A great sigh of relief in finding a real answer in a sea of misinformation.

Balakadut said...

Not work for me :(

I still have 99% CPU Usage when playing counter strike online

DVD Printing said...

Hey, nice site. I will definitely be visiting here more regularly. I wish that I could add the post and bring a bit more to the table... Quite informative..

CD Replication said...

Thanks for this impressive information.

nishith gupta said...

THANK YOU

really helped

Anonymous said...

I'm a different anonymous to all those others, but I echo the sentiments that 6 years on this post is still helping people - specifically me. Many many thanks.

Anonymous said...

Thank you so much man! Nearly jumped for joy screaming IT'S FIXED! IM SAVED! Thank you soooooooooooooo much my laptop runs REALLY fast now!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! :D

Anonymous said...

Jim,
Words cant describe the relief you have brought me and my laptop. This problem started a few weeks ago and I swear I read thro a 100 forums that gave various solutions. Nothing worked. Driver updates, Extra cooling fans, Process Explorer, Disabling various hardware. Had problems getting Xperf to work on XP as well. Was asked to download .NET updates to get xperf. Phew! Then there were OS reinstall / upgrade solutions... Thankfully common sense and curiosity prevailed and I decided to get to the bottom of this. And by sheer luck, today I clicked on ur blog off google. All of my music work was in my laptop n I was one step away from throwing it at the wall. You saved my notebook. :) It says thanks, again. Wats more important is that it was great learning about PIO & DMA.

One request... may be add more meta tags and make this page top the results for "Hardware interrupts High CPU usage"?

You made my day!

Cheers!

B.

Patrick Oneal said...

i thought i would just leave this post behind when i notice i also have the same problem like yours mine is taking all the time just to load a thing i tried this thing and it worked thanks and keep up the good work.

Unknown said...

well it did not work for me. there was not PI0 in the settings but I did go ahead and deinstall and let windows xp do its magic and reinstall them but still the same 98% CPU.
Well then I noticed that the battery display was installed twice in the device manager. I have looked thousands of times in the device manager but did see this fact. so deleted one of the battery display drivers and CPU was on 4%. took me 2 weeks to get this, but hands up to you it got me thinking on the right track.
tks
Mark.

Anonymous said...

Hello

million of thanks, was just about to get a new laptop as after three sessions with "profesionals" I was almost convinced that I had problems with my motherboard or vga, great to see the thing going as fast and clear as day one, now i can display again videos to my customers, many many greetings from Greece

Friendly

Dimitrios, sp racing

Unknown said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Anonymous said...

Ok, this post is like 8 years old and still useful. I didn't show the PIO mode issue described, but after pulling my hair out for hours over this, I decided to force reinstall of the Intel ATA/IDE drivers, and it seems to have solved it. Thanks!

Sysinternals Process Explorer said...

Sysinternals utilities are vital tools for any computer professional on the Windows platform.

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