Super high interrupt and dpc usage at boot

[az10sbum]

Hello all --

I have an older HP Pavilion a1130n that has been a solid computer for several years. Suddenly, it became so slow that it was essentially unusable. This occurred after a failed attempt to upgrade the video card due to a noisy fan and an automatic windows update. Both these updates were removed but the problem remained. (New card was PCIE 2.1 and would not work for some reason. Old card was PCIE 2.0) Anyway, I found that removing the ATI key poller from the boot sequence fixed it. Latest ATI drivers did not help so I ran the system without the module and did not get to the root cause.

Fast forward -- The fan got real bad again and I changed the video card to an nvidia and the problem came back again. I dug in further and found the following issue. (I believe the all the above history is not necessary but I provided it for completeness.)

Upon boot, I get a very high ( about 90%) usage in the category "Hardware interrupts and DPCs". I have determined that if I go into Device Manager and disable all of the USB items, the "Hardware interrupts and DPCs" category instantly drops to less than 1%. The interesting thing is that if I then re-enable all the USB items in the device manager, the computer continues to run correctly and will work correctly until it is rebooted again. When the computer is rebooted, the same sequence then happens again. Also, I am running this test with no USB devices plugged in so the problem cant be a bad device plugged in to a USB port. I am running XP SP3

Any ideas?

Thanks

Dave

Edited October 8, 2011 by az10sbum

[allen2]

You could use check with this which service you may disable/set to manual as it is probably something like ssdp which is causing this problem.

[MagicAndre1981]

which USB devices do you use?

[az10sbum]

allen2 -- I should add that I had disabled all non Microsoft services previously for a test and it did not solve the problem. With the link you provided, I can go through the Microsoft services and disable non-essential services and test those. I tried disabling ssdp but that did not fix it. I also previously tried leaving the USB devices in Device Manager disabled when I reboot so the system would find the hardware and reinstall the drivers. On that reboot, the was no excessive "Hardware interrupts and DPCs" and the system found and installed the USB stuff. On the next reboot the problem was back.

MagicAndre1981 -- I use a Logitech USB keyboard, a USB audio system, mp3 player sometimes, and memory sticks sometimes, but remember I have all USB devices unplugged for this testing. I am using a PS2 keyboard for now. The USB devices I am talking about in the device manager are the USB devices like "Standard Enhanced USB Host Controller"

Also, I should add that after hours of sitting with the "Hardware interrupts and DPCs" at 90%, it will start working correctly. For example, I booted it last night for a test and the problem was there. I went to sleep and this morning the "Hardware interrupts and DPCs" are at 1%

[MagicAndre1981]

remove the USB audio and test again. I think this is the device which causes the issue.

[az10sbum]

remove the USB audio and test again. I think this is the device which causes the issue.

I removed the USB audio in the device manager and as I said earlier, no usb devices are physically plugged in during this testing. Unfortunately, it still has the problem when I boot. I then removed the usb entries from device manager and let windows find them and install them again, but no change.

I think I need to bite the bullet and install the windows performance tools to see what is causing this, but I am not sure how to do that. The write-ups I have found are for 7 and I have XP on this box. (I have other windows 7 boxes on my network but the problem one is an xp box.) Any other ideas? Any links to a WPT tutorial for XP?

Thanks

Dave

[MagicAndre1981]

it works the same for XP, but you can't use the viewer to view the ETL. Also you can't instal it on XP, you must copy it from Win7.

[az10sbum]

it works the same for XP, but you can't use the viewer to view the ETL. Also you can't instal it on XP, you must copy it from Win7.

So if I copy the ETL file to the 7 box, can I use the viewer there, or is the ETL file generated on the XP box not compatible with the viewer?

[MagicAndre1981]

the ETL is compatible. You can copy it to Win7 and run the viewer. But Windows XP doesn't support the stackwalk option. So we can't see which USB function is the cause.

[az10sbum]

it works the same for XP, but you can't use the viewer to view the ETL. Also you can't instal it on XP, you must copy it from Win7.

One more question about the WPTs. I have installed them on one of my 7 computers but all my 7 boxes are 64 bit and the xp box is 32 bit. The install wouldn't let me install 32 bit on the 7 box since it is a 64 bit machine. I am thinking that the xp machine won't be happy when I copy the directory over and try to run stuff.

Thoughts?

[MagicAndre1981]

You can use Universal Extractor to extract the 32Bit MSI and copy the extracted files to the XP system (only xperf.exe and perfctrl.dll are required to make a trace).

[az10sbum]

I did a quick capture while the problem was happening on my system. First, I was warned that a lot of events were missed -- I assume that is because the Interrupts/DPCs are at 90% and there is just not enough bandwidth to get everything onto the disk. I know there are things I can do like increase buffers etc that might help, but I have not messed with that yet.

What I see is that DPC cpu usage is up and down while the problem is happening and maxes out at about 5%. The interrupt CPU usage is pegged while the problem is happening. The max display is 75% so I assume that CPU usage is higher than that. While this event is happening, there are somewhat higher "hard faults" than at other times, but it maxes out at 9 counts and generally is much lower than that.

I didn't look further into the interrupts, but I assume they are USB interrupts since the problem goes away when I disable the USB.

Does this sound like a hardware problem? If so, I wounder why if I disable the USB the problem goes away, but it does not come back again when I re-enable the USB. However, when I reboot, the problem is back.

[MagicAndre1981]

zip and uplaod the trace.

[az10sbum]

what is the preferred way to do the upload? The zip file size is 6.92MB

Thanks

[MagicAndre1981]

upload the zip file to mediafire.com and post the link here.