Although it appears as a process in Task Manager, System Interrupts is a built-in feature of Windows and should not be treated as such. Instead, it’s a collective placeholder for showing how much of your computer’s resources are being used via hardware interrupts.
Computers rely heavily on hardware interrupts, which allow for the efficient management and execution of multiple tasks in parallel. You have hundreds of programmes running in the background.
Processes can utilise interrupts to notify the CPU that they are ready to be executed, or the CPU can use interrupts to execute a critical instruction immediately by pausing other processes.
Method 1: Shutting Down USB Hubs at Their Root
There is no physical device into which you put a USB peripheral in order to use the USB Root Hub. Instead, it is a piece of software that acts as a driver and allows you to hook up a variety of USB devices to your PC.
To allow for the sharing of the data bus across several peripherals, most modern PCs feature numerous USB root hubs. We need to know which USB root hubs your keyboard and mouse are using before we can disable the others.
Our plan is to first ascertain the cause of the excessive CPU utilisation and then, if that is not the case, to disable all unnecessary root hubs.
- Enter “devmgmt.msc” after pressing the Windows key plus R.
- Once you’ve reached the device’s settings, expand “Universal Serial Bus Controllers” to reveal a list of all the device’s primary hubs.
- The root node’s properties can be accessed with a right-click. To see if your gadgets are powered on, open the “Power” tab on the property sheet. If the mouse and keyboard are connected to this central hub, they should become visible. If so, you can safely turn off all the other root hubs except this one.
- Once you’ve determined which root hub is being used by your mouse and keyboard, you can stop using the others by selecting “Disable” from the context menu when you right-click on the one you’re using.
- You can test if the issue has been resolved by performing a system reboot. If this doesn’t help, feel free to undo the modifications.
Method 2: Turning off Enhanced Soundplay
To some degree, the aim of the modifications used by some sound drivers is to increase the quality of your audio output. Major issues, like the one we’re currently facing with excessive CPU use, can arise if certain properties are incompatible with your PC.
We could try turning off the audio effects to see if that helps with the CPU consumption. Although some do, not all sound drivers serve this purpose. They might change the name of the Enhancements menu to “sound blaster.”
That being the case, we can try turning off any audio processing. The “Exclusive mode” feature, which gives other programmes complete access to your sound card, is problematic for some sound drivers.
This shouldn’t be an issue, but testing it out might be a good idea just in case.
- To open the Run dialogue box, press the Windows key plus R. To access the programme, type “Control Panel” into the search bar.
- To adjust the volume, enter “sound” into the control panel’s search bar at the top right of the screen. Activate the audio playback controls in the search results.
- When the volume controls menu appears, select the input device you’re using to play audio from. To access the properties menu, right-click the item.
- The next step is to click the tab labelled “Enhancements” and uncheck all the enhancements that are currently selected.
- Move to the next tab, “Advanced,” and deselect “Exclusive Mode,” where programmes are not allowed to modify the settings. Put your edits to rest and log out.
Method 3: Turning off Wake on Magic Packet Settings
Windows allows your network adapter to wake up your computer when data is being sent or received. The computer says “Wake on Magic Packet” when it receives the data packet.
It appears that many interrupts are generated, and the system replies to each one individually; this is thought to result in excessive CPU utilisation. We can see if we can get rid of this feature by going into your Preferences.
You can always turn it off if it doesn’t work out as planned.
- You can open the computer’s Run programme by pressing the Windows key plus R. In the box that appears, type “devmgmt.msc” and press the Enter key. The computer’s device manager will open up.
- All the devices currently hooked up to your PC will be displayed in the device manager. To access a submenu containing more hardware, select Network Adapters and click the drop-down arrow.
- The properties of your Ethernet and WiFi hardware can be accessed by selecting the hardware, right-clicking, and then selecting the appropriate option from the context menu.
- Proceed to the next tab, “Advanced.” At this location, you’ll have many choices. You can locate the “Wake on Magic Packet” choice at the very end of the list. We’ll unlock its potential soon. To turn it off, choose that option from the drop-down menu.
If you need to, restart your computer and see if it helps.
