Do ALL SP2s suffer from hi CPU utilization when idle due to faulty audio drivers?

[jrapdx]

you can also double click the mp3 file either on your sdcard or on local drive to play the xbox player or whatever default player...Can you check that this works for you as well... it does for me.

Interesting. Engages the sound driver, which is a "player" in the puzzle.

However, I don't have an xbox, or mp3's on my SP2. But I will be curious to try it as soon as I have the opportunity.

One question, did you have to keep it playing or are you saying you could play it briefly and the CPU churning didn't resume?

 

[jrapdx]

This is temporary as noted in my post above yours, any sound played drops cpu back down but it will increase again.

Well, that answers the question. Similar effect to disabling the sound driver, then re-enabling it. Strange behavior indeed.

 

[chmsfor]

This is temporary as noted in my post above yours, any sound played drops cpu back down but it will increase again.

It will? It didn't for me...I have to try it again ... I had removed it after testing for one day ..even putting in hibernate and awakening did not bring cpu back up --but maybe I need to recheck ...

How long after playing a sound does the cpu go back up for you?

 

[chmsfor]

Interesting. Engages the sound driver, which is a "player" in the puzzle.

However, I don't have an xbox, or mp3's on my SP2. But I will be curious to try it as soon as I have the opportunity.

One question, did you have to keep it playing or are you saying you could play it briefly and the CPU churning didn't resume?

Just for a few seconds and stop it ..and it was fine.. Xbox i think is the default music player on sp2? -- Whatever that thing is called anything that plays music might be fine anyway.

What i did was double click an mp3 on my sd card ..it played ..checked my task manger cpu was down.. then stopped the music.. checked the task manager ...it never went up back ...then i changed the power setting to hibernate after a few minutes from sleep closed the lid and came back a few minutes later ..the system had hibernated checked the event log . hibernate was good (does the jan update worked for me) ..checked the task manager cpu around 5 - 0% ...
Later on I took the sd card out ...and no issue with cpu then as well.

 

[jrapdx]

It will? It didn't for me...I have to try it again ... I had removed it after testing for one day ..even putting in hibernate and awakening did not bring cpu back up --but maybe I need to recheck ...

How long after playing a sound does the cpu go back up for you?

Waking from sleep (and I think hibernate as well) will not show the high CPU usage. Nor will restarting the computer.

It only shows with a full shutdown, wait 15 sec, then boot up. If mSD card in slot and Realtek sound driver enabled, the CPU will be high.

Sleep/wake will quiet the high CPU activity. Not clear if sound driver use will do the same.

 

[SteveBorough]

Playing an MP3 doesn't solve the problem -see attached- the music is just paused and quickly the 3 systems processes creep back up. disable hibernate altogether and just let your device sleep and you shouldn't get this issue since there's no cold booting.

 

[jrapdx]

Playing an MP3 doesn't solve the problem -see attached- the music is just paused and quickly the 3 systems processes creep back up. disable hibernate altogether and just let your device sleep and you shouldn't get this issue since there's no cold booting. ...

Sometimes you have to shut it down. Flying on any scheduled airline, the explicit instruction is to turn it off, sleep is not acceptable.

Sleep mode still uses battery power (if not on AC), so there are circumstances that a full shut down is desirable. If the SP2 is going to be unused for a few days, I'll bet you'd want to shut it down.

Booting up from full shut-down isn't really a problem. If the CPU utilization is high, forcing sleep and promptly waking it up relieves the churning every time.

Interesting. You've answered the question: playing audio files only transiently reduces CPU churning.

 

[SteveBorough]

Sometimes you have to shut it down. Flying on any scheduled airline, the explicit instruction is to turn it off, sleep is not acceptable.

Sleep mode still uses battery power (if not on AC), so there are circumstances that a full shut down is desirable. If the SP2 is going to be unused for a few days, I'll bet you'd want to shut it down.

Booting up from full shut-down isn't really a problem. If the CPU utilization is high, forcing sleep and promptly waking it up relieves the churning every time.

Interesting. You've answered the question: playing audio files only transiently reduces CPU churning.

When I say disable hibernation I just mean, turn off the option in the sleep settings of your power profile of choice to put your device in hibernation after X amount of minutes in sleep. Obviously you can still turn off (via charms) or hibernate manually (shutdown /h in CMD) for special cases

 

[jrapdx]

When I say disable hibernation I just mean, turn off the option in the sleep settings of your power profile of choice to put your device in hibernation after X amount of minutes in sleep. Obviously you can still turn off (via charms) or hibernate manually (shutdown /h in CMD) for special cases

Sure, makes sense. Some people have turned off hibernation globally, e.g., setting the registry key-value to 0, etc. Another idea is using only hibernation, not sleep, to minimize the problems.

The common denominator seems to be getting the computer to act predictably. It's failing to be consistent or reliable that is the biggest sin.

 

[chmsfor]

Playing an MP3 doesn't solve the problem -see attached- the music is just paused and quickly the 3 systems processes creep back up. disable hibernate altogether and just let your device sleep and you shouldn't get this issue since there's no cold booting. View attachment 1563

That's interesting. Either different machines have different problems Or maybe you have to play the music from the sd card! Since I do not have any mp3 on the harddrive - I have to play it from the sdcard.
The funny thing is I never got the issue one time when i started from a cold boot. But this weekend after I restarted (after deleting the recovery partition ***unrelated) I got the interrupts again -- playing the music from the sdcard definitely stopped the issue. I have not had the issue since...

 

[jrapdx]

Just to make the waters slightly muddier, after testing it several times, waking from hibernation gives the same CPU utilization effect as cold booting. That is, the CPU load will stabilize at 33% or so, until the SP2 enters sleep and awakens. Then the CPU load drops to the normal 0-2%.

Hibernation-related high CPU load effect requires the same conditions as cold boot: mSD card in slot and Realtek sound drivers enabled. Interestingly, with high CPU load, the CPU temperature increases 10 degrees/C within a few seconds (to ~45/C). Yesterday when I wasn't watching closely, the CPU got up to 80/C. The whole room was getting warm, but I never did hear the fan in the SP2 running.

 

[SteveBorough]

I've never seen this on any of the 3 Surface Pro 2's I support (Mine, Wife's and Son's) All are original 256/8 models. Mine idles between 0-10% CPU with 42% Memory Utilization.

Would you be so kind as to verify once again that this issue is not present on your hardware: SD card in, hibernate computer using "shutdown -h" resume computer and check task manager for the 3 errant processes. Users have confirmed this issue on quite a few machines, (one user tested this at an MS store and every machine had the issue) I just need to know if another device exchange is necessary, thanks.