System Interrupts 100% CPU Usage Windows v1809

System interrupts takes up 100% when user is doing nothing and burning out fan.

Old remedies do not work. This needs an update!

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Thank you for writing to Microsoft Community Forums.

I understand your concern, in order to get more clarity on this issue and to assist you with appropriate troubleshooting steps, reply with the answers to the above questions.

1. Are you aware of any changes made on your PC prior to this issue?

2. What are troubleshooting steps that you have performed to resolve this issue?

High CPU usage is mainly caused due to following reasons, if a program is utilizing up your entire processor, there’s a good chance that it’s not behaving properly.

Method 1 : End the process that is causing high CPU usage.

1. Tap on Ctrl+Shift+Esc on the keyboard.

2. Click on the Processes tab.

3. Click on the ‘ CPU’ column.

4. Find the process that is utilizing the majority of your CPU.

5. Select the program and click on End task .

Method 2 : If the issue persists, boot your PC into safe mode and check if you are facing this issue in the safe mode. Refer the article on Start your PC in safe mode in Windows 10 .

Method 3 : If the issue does not occur in safe mode, perform clean boot and check if any third party software is causing this issue. Refer the following article to perform clean boot .

Also refer the article on Tips to improve PC performance in Windows 10 and check if that helps.

Note : Performing reset will remove all the application and saved data on your PC. Please take a backup before performing reset.

Sandeep Kumar M
Microsoft Community – Moderator

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Suggest you to run System File Checker scan:

1. Search for ‘command prompt’ using Cortana or Windows Search.

2. From results, right click on Command Prompt and select Run as administrator.

3. Type sfc /scannow command and press Enter key.

4. Let the command complete and then reboot the machine.

If issue still persists, perform clean boot:

Let us know if this helps!

Microsoft MVP (Windows IT Pro), since 2014 · Windows Insider MVP · Windows Help (www.kapilarya.com)

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Sandeep Kumar M
Microsoft Community – Moderator

Yes I’ve been doing that for a while, though it’s pointless as as soon as I move the mouse after the computer has been on it’s own, it goes back to normal. It’s happening on my other exact same PC as well.

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The PC’s are both fresh instllations.

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Turns out this is all to do with the 1903 upgrade problem with USB’s. Everytime I have anything connnected via USB it starts burning out my computer when on screensaver mode. No matter which computer I use (have 3) they all go into system interupts mode and start burning it out overnight.

Also when inserting fresh clean 1809 installation stick It will not recognise it on all 3 computers. I cannot even boot the stick from UEFI BIOS. Everything does not work.

So, I have to use an old like 1603 to get the computer to recognise USB to boot into windows.

I think Microsoft have a SERIOUS problem with their USB recognition system.

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So if the user isn’t doing anything — then who is?

«. look for signs your systems are working harder than they should. Mining cryptocurrency is designed to be a CPU-intensive task, after all, and so a good indication of infection is a machine overheating.»

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Thank you for the reply.

1. Have you tried with Method 2 and Method 3 from the suggestion provided on May 5, 2019? If yes, then are you facing this issue when the PC is in safe mode and clean boot?
2. What is the make and model of your PC?

Reply with the information to the above questions, in-order to assist you further. Also share a screen shot of the Device manager with Universal Serial Bus controller expanded and the Task Manager with the process that is causing high CPU usage. Refer the article on How to include a screenshot in your post , posted by CmdrKeene on October 2, 2015 for steps to post a screen shot.

Note : Please do not include any of your personal information in the screenshot.

Meanwhile, let us try with few more troubleshooting methods to resolve this issue and check if that helps:

Method 1: Defragment your Window 10 PC.

1. Select the search bar on the taskbar and enter defrag.
2. Select Defragment and Optimize Drives.
3. Select the disk drive you want to optimize.

Select the Optimize button.

Method 2: Update your USB drivers.

Refer the article on Update drivers in Windows 10 for steps to update your drives. If updating USB drive does not fix the issue, I suggest you to reinstall the drivers, you can refer the above article for steps to reinstall the USB drivers. You can also check the manufacturer’s website for driver updates.

Method 3: Run Microsoft Safety Scanner.

Run Microsoft safety scanner and check if the PC is infected with malware. Refer the article on Microsoft Safety Scanner for more information.

NOTE: This tool does not replace your antimalware product. For real-time protection with automatic updates, use Windows Defender Antivirus on Windows 10 and Windows 8 or Microsoft Security Essentials on Windows 7 . These antimalware products also provide powerful malware removal capabilities. If you are having difficulties removing malware with these products, you can refer to our help on removing difficult threats .

We await your response.

Sandeep Kumar M
Microsoft Community – Moderator

Task Manager High CPU Usage

My laptop used to have a moderately high performance with i7-4712HQ, 16GB RAM, Samsung Evo750 1TB SSD, GTX850M.

Now I suffer from serious system delay for a period. One symptom I noticed is having slow speed opening file explorer (would need to wait for like 3 seconds after clicking on the icon). Another major symptom is stated as the subject.

Sometimes, when I experience a slow performance and I want to check what’s using up my hardware resources, the task manager would often take more than 5 seconds to display anything, and not responding periodically. Sometimes it shows my cpu usage to be 100%, where the first three apps (sorted by cpu usage) cost no more than 15% and others are all below 10% (I doubt they will add up to 100%). My system will be super laggy with the cursor respond to the mouse with 1 sec delay, not moving smoothly. I wonder if there’s anything wrong with the system, or just my laptop is out of its life? Although I’ve only used it for 3 years.

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The specifications of your device are higher end.

Can help to disable all programs running simultaneously with Windows in the Task Manager by clicking the Startup tab found there but I suspect you may have already done this.

The history of your device might be responsible for it’s slower performance. Was it upgraded to Windows 10 from 7, 8, or 8.1?

What version and OS build are you running?

There’s nothing like performing a Clean Installation of Windows 10 and reformatting the SSD anew to revive performance.

If you need to preserve your files you can perform the Custom Installation of Windows 10 This will save them to a Windows.old folder.

There is also a Reset option and a Start Fresh option within Windows 10 for starting over.

Have you run a CHKDSK /F on your SSD?

Those are some thoughts.

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I have the same issue. I noticed if I click the task manager it take quite awhile to open up. If I sort by Name, it hangs for 10 seconds are so. Sorting by other columns is faster but it still hangs.

When this happens, the mouse lags too. I have unplugged all external devices except for the mouse and keyboard, and the CDROM and it still happens.

Virus scan does not find anything.

I suspect it might be related to the Windows 10 Creators edition update that recently happened.

I have a 6-Core Xeon E5-2620 with 40GB of RAM and SSDs for primary hard drives.

Needless to say, this is drive me nuts.

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I have this exact same issue, as Charles mentioned the mouse lags and hangs for a couple of settings when sorting by names.

Sometimes it decides to hang for that exact time just by opening task manager without sorting, I’ve not found a common cause to the issue but it seems to happen a lot when I have memory hungry applications open.

It does indeed drive me nuts also.

I’m running windows on an SSD and have a 6700k and I’m also loaded with 16gigs of DDR4 so this can’t be a hardware issue I wouldn’t think,

I don’t know how more people aren’t experiencing this, I guess a lot of people don’t use task manager enough to notice.

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The Windows Creator update created other issues for me too. I use Dragon NatuallySpeaking and after the update it would not work. I tracked down the issue to my anti-virus software Webroot.

I made modifications based upon this article and it corrected the Dragon issue and somewhat improved the above reported issue but, it did not correct the issue completely. I am careful not to have task manager and a web browser open at the same time.

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Your reply is absurd (sorry).

I have an Alienware i7 new laptop with Windows 10 Pro.

It suffers from the problem — when the task manager is started, NOTHING works for minutes. Almost completely unresponsive!

The mouse cursor doesn’t barely moves. I have to find the cursor using cursor sonar, then make a swipe movement toward the window exit control wait for it to move (30-60 seconds each time), finally getting the cursor positioned on the X and THEN press the left mouse button and wait for taskmgr to exit.

Have to close the taskmgr to make it stop.

I have another i7 laptop a Qosmio from Toshiba that has the exact sample problem as several other machines running Windows 10 Pro. All have this problem. All BUT the Alienware is a upgrade to Window 10 Pro. In the upgrade case, the problem only surfaced around Oct to Nov not immediately after the upgrades.

The problem seems likely to some update to Windows 10 Pro subsequent to its initial release.

Microsoft needs to do a better job replicating this problem and fixing it.

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Performance issues in Windows devices are usually occurring due to software conflicts. For us to provide an effective solution, we would need you to answer the following questions:

• Which build of Windows 10 Pro is installed on the devices that are affected by this issue?
• Are you experiencing the same issue even when the devices are on clean boot mode?
• What changes have you made to the device before the issue occurred?
• Is the issue happening to all of the user profiles in the devices?

In the meantime, it will be best to make sure that your Windows is up to date. Let us know if the same issue persists after installing Windows Update.

We are looking forward to your response.

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I could replicate this issue systematically in clean boot mode on two Win10 Pro 1709 machines (one assembled PC, one Asus Transformer Pro): after clean boot, launch TM in detailed processes view, then fire up several browsers and watch Windows take the dive.

Win10 Home, on a third machine, was less affected by this problem. But here too, there are many performance issues, with many third-party software I must use. And the only real solution I found was to revert to Win 8.1.

Strangely enough, I could not replicate the issue on a Microsoft Surface. I didn’t try hard, though.

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We appreciate your cooperation in resolving this concern. We are still looking forward to the response of other community members in this thread, for us to verify if reverting to Windows 8.1 will also address the issue on their devices.

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winver gives: 1709 OS Build 16299.192 — this is a new Alienware machine not three months old.

I have changed no hardware.

It happens with both the admin or a normal user login.

BTW: I do NOT have a microsoft account associated with these users (not that it SHOULD matter).

This suggestion is silly:

In the meantime, it will be best to make sure that your Windows is up to date. Let us know if the same issue persists after installing Windows Update.

How is it possible to NOT have Window 10 be updated over any length of time?

When it first obtained the machine, this problem with the taskmgr freezing the system did NOT happen. I suspect IS to some Window 10 enforced updated.

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Your PC performance might have been slowed down due to a possible hardware issues or a corrupted system file. As suggested previously by Darleen Pen last February 11, 2018 on this thread, performing a clean boot would be a big help in determining if there are any possible 3rd party programs that might be affecting the performance of the computer specially if some programs got corrupted which can be determined by enabling each service one by one after each restart. If the slowdown happens when enabling one of the services, a reinstall or removing the program from the system could fix it.

In the meantime, keeping your Windows up to date specially to the latest build would ensure that any known issues on the system would be addressed by updating to the latest build which you can download and install manually on the Microsoft Update Catalog database.

We would also like to clarify if have you tried optimizing the performance of your Windows? Because there are cases wherein outdated drivers, low disk spaces, programs running on the background, or at times viruses and malwares can be one of the many reasons that could be the cause of the slow down.

If you you’ve already performed those troubleshooting, then the next one that can be done is ensuring that your current user profile is not corrupted. You’ll be able to determine that by creating a new user profile and naming it as Test. In this process, what’s being tested is the PowerShell of the current user profile or if is it the system files that are causing the slowness. If this re-occurs on the Test user profile, then a Sytem File Check (SFC) Scan is the next step to perform in addressing this as this would not only be doing a file check, but also try to fix any system file that it detects broken.

If you have further questions, please feel free to reply to this post.