System Interrupts - Problem or Symptom?

boweasel said:

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.

Hi there
If you have slow disks, a lot of concurrent processes running -- including unseen background processes, and not enough RAM for the load then the interrupt (or task manager) will have to page out some of these processes (or swap) to HDD which can take an age on an over committed system.

Not saying that's the problem but it can be a cause of an overcommitted system with sluggish disks. Remember the Interrupt processor is usually the highest priority task in the system too so when it's working pretty well everything else is suspended until the interrupt is handled and the task manager can then resume processing in the normal way.

Cheers
jimbo

AndreTen said:

Go to resplendence.com | downloads and download Latencymon (scroll down a bit …) Post the results here

Wanted to post these reports before I went into BIOS

AndreTen said:

Go into BIOS and disable LPT port, if you have one. Also any other legacy stuff.

Can find nothing in the BIOS about any ports. And no legacy stuff, AFAIK.

Does ANYBODY have any suggestions. I was sort of hoping that AndreTen was onto something with the Latency Monitor suggestion, but I posted those results on Feb. 20.

It really seems to have nothing to do with downloading. I've gotten interrupts while doing nothing more than playing Spider Solitaire.

Excessive interrupts can be caused by failing hardware. As latency monitor suggest the problem is network related the network interface would be a possibility. As a test I would disable the network adapter in device manager.

AndreTen said:

like Lmiller suggested. network is causing this. In my last post there was s suggestion to compare Ethernet and Wifi, that could confirm the culprit.

Could be solvable with installing correct drivers (from manufacturer's site) - if confirmed

After significant encouragement I posted my system specs weeks ago. And while I appreciate all the feedback and intimations that the problem is 'driver related', none of that gets me any closer to a resolution.

This is a Toshiba Satellite L755-S5153. It originally ran Windows 7 Home Premium but was upgraded to Windows 10 years ago where it seemed to operate flawlessly until a few months ago.

When I go to the Toshiba drivers page and enter my serial number I'm prompted to select an Operating System from a pull down box. Windows 10 is not listed. So telling me that the issue can be solved by the installation of the correct drivers from the manufacturer is only helpful if I know what drivers to install.

AndreTen said:

And are the symptoms there with both, ethernet (wired) and wireless network transfer?

Okay. I finally lugged the laptop down to the room with the modem, connected an ethernet cable and turned on the laptop. It connected to the internet alright, but wirelessly.

I went into devmgr and right clicked my wired adapter (it was something that started with the letters TAP - I really didn't think it was necessary to write it down). I selected update driver and it told me the best adapter was already installed. I went into change adapter options and saw that the wired connection had a red X on it. I troubleshooted the wired adapter and it told me to plug in an ethernet cable, which of course I'd already done. I then deleted the wired adapter in devmgr and restarted the PC.

It never reinstalled a wired adapter, so I re-enabled wireless and went back to the Toshiba page (Drivers & Software Support | Toshiba ), entered my model (Satellite L755-S5153) and clicked on the pull-down for OS. My OS is not listed. This was updated to W10 from W7 years ago. I clicked on Windows 8.1 64 bit and then checked the box for network adapters. It displayed only 2 drivers - both of them wireless - a Realtek Wireless LAN Driver and an Atheros Wireless LAN Driver. The Realtek is the one I'm currently using.

Of course, none of that means anything about trying to download anything with a WIRED connection. Or about the System Interrupts. Did anything jump out at anyone with the Latency Monitor results I posted?