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System and compressed memory & System interrupts unfixable CPU usage
Hi! So my friend has a PC with Windows 10 (installed from USB-Stick with the WindowsMediaCreationTool). It ran fine for about two weeks, which is when the problem started: The "System and compressed memory" and "System interrupts" processes taking up *a lot* of CPU time even at idle. https://i.imgur.com/cDDZhRC.png
The system is usable for web browsing and such, but everything that needs performance like games is severely hindered by these processes. It also doesn't allow the processor to ever go into a lower C-State ("power saving mode" / reduced multiplier), it runs at full speed all the time. Needless to say this is *extremely* annoying and defeats the purpose which the PC was built for in the first place (playing games). Now, this is what we have tried so far: After I couldn't find a solution, I just told him to re-format since that usually solves these kinds of problems. And it did! But only for around 3 days, then the problem was there again. Disconnecting all cables except for the monitor and power cables didn't help. Disabling devices in the device manager didn't help. Disabling automatic updates and Windows defender didn't help. So I just told him to re-format *again* just to see at what point the problem would appear. But this time, right after the system was booted up, and the usual update and search indexer processes were done, the same problem appeared again. So he tested his memory with memtest86, but found no errors. His SSD seems 100% healthy too, according to Crystal Disk Info. Then I tried profiling what actually takes up those CPU cycles to get a better understanding of the problem, and here are the results: Imgur: The most awesome images on the Internet But while doing that, somehow, the problem disappeared. So he refomatted the PC a third time just to see what happens, but the problem was still gone. The PC ran fine for around two days. But now the terror called "System and compressed memory" and "System interrupts" is back. And it's here to stay, apparently.
Since ACPI (see profiling results) seems somehow connected to the BIOS power management, I had him download the latest BIOS patch from the Asus website and flash his BIOS - with no avail. It didn't change anything. At this point I'm not sure what to do. He could try reformatting again 5 times until it's gone, but the problem would just appear again after a few days. I don't understand what the cause of this is (I suspect some sort of driver issue), and I'm completely out of ideas on what to try. I hope you people can help me.
In case you're wondering, he has a desktop PC, Asus Z97-P motherboard, Intel Pentium G2358 CPU, GTX 660, 8 GiB RAM, Samsung 850 Evo SSD. No additional storage is connected (except for an USB stick but disconnecting it doesn't do anything).
Edit: Booting in safe mode reduces CPU usage a bit, but doesn't solve the issue.
Edit: After re-installing multiple times, the issue doesn't go away and is immediately there after having installed the system. Since my friend never uses more than 3 GiB RAM anyway, isn't there a way to completely disable "System and compressed memory"?
Last edited by yongyung; 30 May 2016 at 10:47.