System Interrupts - Problem or Symptom?

See if anyone has ideas on this...

My Windows 10 Home (1803) has been experiencing download problems. I pretty much always use Chrome. Sometimes the download will complete without a hitch. Other times the whole system will grind to a halt - even task manager is slow to respond. When taskmgr finally comes up, System Interrupts will be using about 45% of the CPU and I can't really do much of anything until the percentage drops back down to its normal .5 to 1%, usually 10 - 15 seconds.

When I then check the progress of a download it will display a rate of 0 bytes per second for another 15 to 20 seconds. Then that download screen will have a horizontal through my once downloading file with the phrase 'Network error' next to it. There will be a blue box below the download labeled 'Resume', and I can usually get it to resume from the spot it left off. This whole scenario may occur multiple times before the download completion.

I have checked for viruses, adware and drivers that need updating. I found nothing.

Thank you in advance for any suggestions you folks may have.

Ran this about a month ago, but I ran the system file checker again. Same results:
Windows Resource Protection did not find any integrity violations.

Try3 said:

I once looked into this subject briefly [my problem sorted itself out for reasons I did not understand].

These discussions helped me understand what was happening. From these discussions, I understood it to be a hardware driver problem.
CPU Util-usage what is System Interrupts process.... - TenForums [see @jimbo45 post]
What Is the “System Interrupts” Process and Why Is It Running on My PC
[Solved]System Interrupts taking CPU [Solved] - Asus - Laptop General Discussion
How to Fix High CPU Usage Caused by System Interrupts

You might also wish to review some of the other Tenforums discussions on the subject using -
Google Search for site:tenforums.com system interrupts

Best of luck,
Denis

Hi there

@Try3

computer system Interrupts are necessary -- for example it's a bit like in the real world: Say you are watching TV and the phone rings -- you can then put TV on Pause while you answer the phone and then resume the TV program after you've dealt with the phone call.

Computers use a similar mechanism -- for example if the computer wants input (keyboard etc) it will suspend processes when it gets a notification from the keyboard -- it will process that and continue. Of course keyboard input is about a zillion times slower than other processes but it has a high priority so will in general be serviced first.

Cheers
jimbo

I'd already gone into Device Manager, expanded each component one by one, right-clicking on the device and selecting Update Driver, followed by Search Automatically for Update Driver Software. I found 2 drivers that needed to be updated. Updating these did nothing to alter the frequency of interrupts. But thanks for the reply.

jimbo45 said:

Hi there

computer system Interrupts are necessary -- for example it's a bit like in the real world: Say you are watching TV and the phone rings -- you can then put TV on Pause while you answer the phone and then resume the TV program after you've dealt with the phone call.
Computers use a similar mechanism -- for example if the computer wants input (keyboard etc) it will suspend processes when it gets a notification from the keyboard -- it will process that and continue. Of course keyboard input is about a zillion times slower than other processes but it has a high priority so will in general be serviced first.
Cheers
jimbo

Yes, I know that the interrupts are necessary, but they typically consume very little CPU. But when they routinely jump to 46 to 49% and the laptop becomes unresponsive for several minutes until the percentage drops back into the normal range...., well that seems to be indicative of a greater problem.

System Specs