HEL80: Inturruption between power / battery?

Hello, I've been using this HEL80 for nearly a year, without many problems before this happened:

I'm not sure when this started, but certainly from some point on, the CPU usage was at constant 20%-30% level. This was of course under fully updated Windows XP SP2 and all drivers and BIOS up to date. When I bring up the task manager, the System Idle Process shows up in 98-99 range, yet the CPU Usage graph seen under Performance tab shows a steady 20%-30% use.

At first it seemed like a problem caused by spyware/malwares or viruses. I cleaned up my system using various programs, only to find out that a handful of spywares that I did have in my system had nothing to do with the CPU usage. Then I proceeded to wipe out the OS, format the disk, and install a fresh copy of the XP2. Even that didn't help.

To dig deeper into the problem, I tried using the ProcExplorer (supposedly a more detailed version of the task manager) and discovered what was causing all that CPU usage. There is a process called DPCs, described as Deferred Procedure Calls, that was hogging up the exact amount of CPU cycle that was mysteriously being used up.

Some extensive googling and reading lead me to the conclusion that some sort of hardware conflict was causing this DPCs spike. Of course, I had to try and disable all sorts of hardware, be it the video card, the sound card, whatever, to see if the conflict is resolved. Nada.

Until I tried pulling the battery off while the HEL80 was still plugged. The DPCs process came in and out in sync with me plugging the battery on and off.

When HEL80 is running only on the battery, however, the DPCs is also killed.

Sorry for a long long rant. To recap,

-My HEL80 having a battery on and being plugged at the same time causes what seems like a hardware inturruption, resulting in wasted CPU usage. Should I simply live with it, or could there be ways to fix the problem?

Thanks in advance for any helps and comments.

 

Just tried jumping back and forth between various BIOS versions, to no avail. Could it be possible that some physical damage (that I'm obviously not aware of) is causing this problem?

Also, the DPCs process dying when I pull out the battery only seems to be temporary. After a minute or so, it just comes back on. Same applies when it's running only on the battery.

Is this sort of problem even covered by the warranty? Has anyone seen any problems like this?

 

I experienced this issue with my HEL-80 as well, until some time ago it mysteriously disappeared.

 

Thanks for the input. So the problem just disappeared by itself huh?

Do you recall how long the problem lasted, or measures you took to fix it?

 

It lasted two-three months I think. I used process explorer ( http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896653.aspx) to measure the unwanted CPU usage. Furthermore, I used RATTv3 to find out the source of the DPC's. I think ACPI.sys used to generate a lot of interrupts, but I don't know for sure. There were more threads (like ntoskrnl.exe if I recall correctly) causing many interrupts. I tried reinstalling almost every driver, chipset drivers included. Disabled devices in the device manager and then rebooting etc. Couldn't really pinpoint the source in the end.

Could you maybe tell me the services and processes you are running in the background? Or post a screenshot of the task manager? Maybe there's some evil program we have or had in common. Maybe some info about the services running on the background as well?

 

I was directed to use RATT too, except I didn't exactly understand how to use it ;p

DPCs spike seems to go in and out quite randomly. It was somehow gone for several hours this morning, only to come back during the same session (no reboot, not much activity other than internet browsing).

Attached are my running processes and services. I noticed that the process "Hardware Interrupts" is present; should I be worried about that as well?

 

When you run RATT, it creates a logfile (C:\WINDOWS\system32\LogFiles\RATTV3). I'll check your screenshots.

 

I fired up Process Explorer and DPCs take about 3% on average, with some spikes going up to 5. So I guess I'm better than you? Or should I still worry?
I'm using BIOS 1.23 downloaded from Intel's site. Windows XP with basically all updates (except the ones for Outlook and IE7 which I don't use)

 

As far as I know, the fact that DPCs exist precisely signify that there is something hardware-related at fault. It could have something to do with faulty drivers, conflict between drivers and apps, physical damage to the hardware, such and such. Tricky thing is that, to many, DPCs seem to appear even without the users doing something to the system at all, like installing new programs or plugging new devices.