System and compressed memory & System interrupts unfixable CPU usage

yongyung · 30 May 2016

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"?

dalchina · 30 May 2016

Hi, please feel free to search the forum for threads on "system and compressed memory" where you will find useful information and some fixes.

Here are some I collected on this topic:
System and compressed memory- solutions.doc
System and compressed memory.doc

Please read thru these, keep a list of what you try, then if you still have this problem, post again, listing what you have tried. Good luck!

yongyung · 30 May 2016

Thanks for the suggestions, but most of those we already tried. Disabling "show me tips about Windows" doesn't help. Booting into safe mode (just tried it) doesn't help either (although CPU usage goes down to 50%, which is still one core running at 100% so not that great), which I think also excludes the video driver from being the issue? The system isn't connected to an HDD, floppy or optical drive.

yongyung · 31 May 2016

Well apparently the problem is unsolvable. As I edited in above, my friend re-formatted multiple times and the problem is always there again immediately after installing Windows. Interestingly it was randomly gone for a few hours yesterday, but after restarting the PC it's there again. I don't understand why Microsoft doesn't give us a way to completely disable the compressed memory feature considering how buggy it is. Anyway, the only way seems to be to ditch Windows 10 and go back to Windows 7.

dalchina · 31 May 2016

Is your friend's PC known to be Win 10 compatible, or a custom build? If the latter, it rather becomes his responsibility to diagnose incompatibilities or issues, unfortunately.

Does the problem arise if you do a clean boot?
How about Safe Mode?
What if you disable certain drivers?

yongyung · 31 May 2016

It's a custom build. (Components are quite non-exotic though, can be found in the entry post.)
Clean boot and safe mode both see a small reduction in CPU usage, but don't solve the issue. Disabling audio/network/graphics devices in the device manager and then restarting doesn't help either. :/

MrBill · 22 Jun 2016

yongyung said:

It's a custom build. (Components are quite non-exotic though, can be found in the entry post.)
Clean boot and safe mode both see a small reduction in CPU usage, but don't solve the issue. Disabling audio/network/graphics devices in the device manager and then restarting doesn't help either. :/

I am having the same issue. I'm starting to wonder if it is an ASUS thing. In my case I'm on an x99-deluxe mobo with an 8 core 5960x. I have 32Gb of RAM. It can't really slow this machine down too much. It keeps the CPU at 8% usage when idle However, it does warm up a bit over time. It seems to enjoy jumping to one core and then another after a few seconds. Unfortunately it pegs the core on the top end, which is overclocked to almost 4Ghz. No software on this machine comes close to pegging any of the cores other than my games. So I'm wondering what the heck.

It may sound like a nit, but heat is what kills components. I don't need cores heating up, or my SSD getting tapped at random for reasons nobody, as far as I can tell, can figure out. Like you I've tried all the ideas, and nothing works. Hate to go back to Windows 7. I actually prefer 10, or at least I did until this thing showed up.

yongyung · 22 Jun 2016

Could definitely be an Asus thing. I mean it pretty much has to be something pretty deep in the system like a driver or firmware. Sadly my friend doesn't live near me so I can't just swap out every component to see what happens. The current "solution" is to restart the PC until the problem disappears (usually takes like 5-10 tries), and then keep it on as long as possible, lol. He's probably going to install Win 7 again at the end of the month when he doesn't have to worry about it auto-upgrading to Win 10 anymore.

MrBill · 24 Jun 2016

yongyung said:

Could definitely be an Asus thing. I mean it pretty much has to be something pretty deep in the system like a driver or firmware. Sadly my friend doesn't live near me so I can't just swap out every component to see what happens. The current "solution" is to restart the PC until the problem disappears (usually takes like 5-10 tries), and then keep it on as long as possible, lol. He's probably going to install Win 7 again at the end of the month when he doesn't have to worry about it auto-upgrading to Win 10 anymore.

I replied to this on another thread in the forum as well. After thinking through it, testing some more, including a fresh install, and comparing to all my non-ASUS machines I came to one conclusion. It honestly shouldn't matter. The purpose of the process is to compress unused apps into memory and leave them there unless memory is needed. Then they go to the swapfile. Given its purpose, it should have been coded to use minimal resources and to have a hard stop on how long it runs in idle mode.

Instead, it's banging the CPU or memory based on a driver or app. There should be no dependency there. This is a kernel process. So to use a technical term, "Sumpin' broke." Likely the developers when with dynamic memory and resource allocation, which makes sense, unless you don't cap it. While the process is a good idea, it's odd to find it in the core OS designed to run on everything from low resource hardware to a high end gaming machine like mine. I can't imagine what happens on some hardware where this occurs in battery mode. Hopefully it's fixed in the anniversary release. If not, they need to smash the bug before the release date.

MrBill · 24 Jun 2016

I may have stumbled on our solution, thanks to ROG users. What they describe, and the solution is exactly what I'm seeing, and what I think a lot of people are seeing. It appears to revolve around ACPI.SYS.

The short version is I'm going to try something I had been considering. I'm going to load only the Windows 10 drivers and only the ASUS pieces I have to have. (Memory serves Microsoft already provides ACPI.SYS) We'll see what happens, but I have high hopes. BTW, although the forums focus on the AI Suite, this file is installed outside of that, at least if you download all the ASUS drivers for your PC. Since other models don't all seem to have this issue, I'm guessing the MSFT version works.
https://rog.asus.com/forum/showthrea...x1f9c0)-go-mad
https://rog.asus.com/forum/showthrea...th-AI-Suite-3/