AboutMike Expertise Areas of expertise: PC Hardware, Peripherals, Barcode Scanners, Printers, and Applications, Basic Networking, Microsoft Applications. I am good at researching issues and have a lot of contacts. So if I can't directly answer a question I can likely find the answer.
Areas I won't be much help in: Apple Computers, Linux, older Networking topologies like Token Ring.
Experience I'm currently an IT Support Technician for a contract circuit
board manufacturer in Oregon, USA. I've been working on PCs from a hobby standpoint for better than 25 years. I've been doing it professionally for 3 years.
Expert: Mike Date: 6/28/2008 Subject: Hardware interrupts
Question QUESTION: hello,
I need help with getting a process called "Hardware interrupts" to stop. This process is taking 80 of my CPU usage so when i go to use my computer it is almost unusable.
Please help me find a way to get rid of this. Thank you
ANSWER: Right-click My Computer, then Manage, go to Device Manager the open your IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers section.
Once open righ click on Primary IDE Channel and go to Properties, then Advanced Settings. Under Transfer Mode make sure it is set to DMA if available.
Follow the same steps for the Secondary IDE Channel and when done restart your computer.
With any luck that alone should solve your problem but if it doesn't, and if your motherboard has built in Firewire (1394 controller/net adapter) that you do not use then disable it.
You should also check what make/model your motherboard is and go to the manufacturers website and look to see if there is an updated BIOS version available and upgrade.
Let me know how the above goes.
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QUESTION: ok i did that but im still having the same problem...my BIOS are up to date.
ANSWER: I'm guessing by the time stamp on your feedback (thank you, by the way) that this issue is resolved now since it was lefter after you submitted this question.
If you need any further help with anything feel free to drop me a note.
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QUESTION: ok the same problem is back now. once again "Hardware interrupts" is takeing up my CPU and i redid what you told me to do in the begining but Im still haveing the problem..so what should i do now?
Answer That sucks. You definitely have some piece of internal hardware that is having driver issues.
First things first, download and install Sysinternal's Process Explorer. This is an application very similiar to Task Manager but it gives a much more detailed breakdown of just what background services are being caused by what. You can get it here:
If you take a look at the Hardware Interrupt service in Process Explorer it may very well tell you exactly what is causing it to peg like that.
If it doesn't, then next thing I'd try is to actually uninstall the aforementioned Primary and Secondary IDE Channels, starting with the Primary. Then reboot and the system will just reinstall it.
If that doesn't fix the problem then work your way through the various secondary computer devices, such as the High Definition Audio Bus, USB Controller, etc and Disable them one at a time.
Then reboot after each and see if the problem is fixed or continues. If it's fixed, then uninstall whichever device you had disabled and reboot.
If it's not fixed then re-enable the device and move on to the next one. Just concentrate on the main components and steer clear of the System devices section of Device Manager because there's a lot of devices in there and those aren't likely the cause anyway.
You can test your Video by rebooting and going into Safe Mode to see if the CPU is still pegged. If it isn't then uninstall and reinstall your video card.
Sorry for the 'shotgun effect' type of troubleshooting advice here but sometimes computer issues are like that. You have a difficult one to nail down so a blanket approach to finding the solution is about the only option.
Let me know how it goes.
Just an FYI, this site only allows a certain number of 'follow-ups' so you might have to submit me a whole new request.
