CPU Util/usage: what is "System Interrupts" process....

while trying to figure why current Goog Chrome eats cpu's, I was surprised to see a generic "System Interrupts" listed in Task Manager in windows 10, constantly munching 40-50% of cpu - with no identity or info shown.....
what is that? a logging util for feedback? debugger?
any ideas? it exacerbates the problem I'm chasing with Chrome,, which seems to afflict W7/8/8.1/10 even with a fresh install

That typically means you have a driver that's going crazy. Have you installed any 3rd party or non-default drivers?

no, just put 10 on it and left it. guess I better hit amd's site

well that was unproductive. all devices look just peachy. using Process Explorer, with basically nothing going on, this is what it gives. quite consistently.

The entry for Hardware Interrupts is not a real process, just a convenient way to show the time consumed by a low level hardware function. But 35% is very high. This usually means a driver or hardware problem.

Hi there.

Interrupts: Computer Science 101. !!!!!

Imagine you are sitting at the computer and you want to type some input or do a mouse action.

Now the computer can do this basically in TWO ways -- it could have a process in the computer always looking to see if there's a mouse or keyboard action required. This would obviously be a wasteful process as the program would have to be continuously running and would consume memory and CPU resources.

So what happens is when you click on the keyboard or mouse a special piece of HARDWARE in the motherboard indicates to the computer that a mouse / keyboard action is pending. Since this is of a HIGH priority the OS suspends other tasks and services the keyboard / mouse.

It's a bit like if you are say quietly sitting in a room watching TV or having a nice drink (or both) and the phone rings. Most people then stop what they are doing to answer the phone. Depending on what the phone call is about they will either resume what they were doing when the call is finished or do something else (Go out for example).

Fairly simple concept but incredibly important in both hardware ands software design.

Other pieces of hardware can also have interrupts too.


Cheers
jimbo

I was suspicious of that one, but WHERE do I find the driver?
I tried uninstalling that and it came right back - 10 does not give me the tick box for "Uninstall Driver".

ALSO, the Catalyst wad. set to custom, does not discover the chipset devices: no detection of SATA, no detection of USB. I checked the USB stack and all the devices that HAVE drivers are generic 2006 MS drivers, but some of the sub devices have no driver installed....
on the Web I see a lot of posts of later AMD usb devices dysfunctional because of missing/obscure drivers. I have a Thinkpad x120e but its lucky.... running win7 x64 it is config'd correctly thanks to lenovo hunting down drivers

TairikuOkami said:

By any chance have you installed AMD SATA driver? The driver from this year causes this.
If that is the case, uninstall and delete it and use the 13.12, older or default Windows SATA.

TairikuOkami. you win the golden mouse!
what was throwing me was the absence of a way to "uninstall AND delete driver". Turned out I didn't need to do that, but rather 'install different", and found the MS driver in the list.

what prompted me to return to this obvious potential cause was looking at my well-behaved x120e, as it has the same chipset, and sure enough, the MS provided devices.

so, from chronic mid-30% range,, I'm currently as I type at a placid 4% cpu utilization!
yay.

I give you kudos

TairikuOkami said:

By any chance have you installed AMD SATA driver? The driver from this year causes this.
If that is the case, uninstall and delete it and use the 13.12, older or default Windows SATA.