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Slow PC high CPU uTorrent and Hardware Interrupts.


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Slow PC high CPU uTorrent and Hardware Interrupts.

My PC got slow. And restoring an Image of a fine working C-drive did not help much. That usually is a sign, the problem is hardware related. Closing uTorrent did improve performance, but uTorrent had never caused problems before. So what was wrong?..

I used Process Explorer for analysis. Free download here:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896653.aspx

Process Explorer showed 50% CPU use by "Hardware Interrupts". (second item from above)

1. I solved most of the problem by checking for faulty hardware contacts. Disconnect and reconnect everything: external and internal plugs, PCI-cards a.o. Try some of these:

- Remove external cables of USB-drives, webcams, printers etc. Check Process Explorer again.

- Turn off the PC and remove all cables from the front- and rear panels. Use a vacuum cleaner to clean sockets and connectors (the power fan sucks air though them; they can be full of dust.) Plug cables back, restart, check Process Explorer again.

- Internal, in the PC itself: unplug and re-plug all cables: IDE, Sata, floppydrive, a.o.

- Internal: pull out all PCI-cards, and put them back again: video, sound, network, etc.

- Internal: You may do the same with memory and the processor, but that requires some skill.

NOTE: dust inside the PC is not the biggest problem. (Fans may dysfunction of it.) But from experience I know (a lot of) cigarette smoke is. Smoke is very fine sticky dust, that can pollute inside contacts. Unplugging and re-plugging should be enough, but sometimes I use contact spray, the fine one for tuners, on sockets, plugs, and cards.

NOTE: if there are any suspect cables, don't hesitate, and replace them: bad cables can cause trouble you can't detect. It can cost you many hours before you finally find out.

2. Slow performance and Interrupts can be caused by IDE-settings, that accidentally have fallen back from DMA-mode to PIO-mode. (seems to be a XP-problem.) In PIO-mode the processor controls traffic between the hard disk and memory. In DMA mode (direct memory access), the hard disk accesses the memory directly, leaving the processor free for other tasks.

Check settings in Control Panel > System > Tab Hardware > Device Manager > IDE ATA Atapi controllers > both Primary and Secondary IDE Channels > Tab Advanced Settings.

Be sure it says: DMA if Available. And see there under the current modus, if it is Ultra DMA.

If not, uninstall the channels there (right click), and restart the PC. Windows will install them again at restart. Check both channels again. Does DMA now work? Check "Hardware Interrupts" again in Process Explorer.

If the problem remains, the hard disk cable or Dvd cable may be bad. Or the jumpers on the hard disks (on IDE) and CDrom for master/slave/cableselect are wrongly set. Be sure that hardware configuration is good, and find out how it should be done.

3. The network card (or router) may be overloaded. Reduce the bandwidth in uTorrent a bit, and see if it helps. (right click Icon > Up/download speed.) Search for new network drivers. The card, the wiring, the plugs or the sockets can be of bad quality. Check all connections.

4. Whenever the PC is slow, and I notice 100% CPU, it seems uTorrent ánd eMule too use a lot more CPU than usual. They both can go up to 40-50% or so, while normally they use 15% or so. Closing uTorrent mostly doesn't help too much, so I think the main cause is elsewhere. But so they may contribute keeping the CPU-usage at 100%. I don't know, but perhaps they ask for a lot more Interrupts.

5. Another tip I saw, but that might not be related to Interrupts at all, is to exclude utorrent.exe from AVG antivirus.

6. But I haven't fixed my own smaller problem, related to uTorrent. Process Explorer shows that "Hardware Interrupts" increase with uTorrent traffic. At 2 megabytes/s upload, Process Explorer shows about 20% CPU usage by Hardware Interrupts. (and about 12% at 1,3 MBps.)

And then Interrupts + uTorrent + eMule use 50-60% together. And that's a problem.

I have a fibre connection, symmetric 25 megabitspersecond (3 MBps) up and download. Netcard Realtek8139 10/100. Athlon 3000, 2 GB mem, sharing 80 GB stuff. Running eMule too, but that doesn't result in interrupts. Closing Outpost Firewall or Avast antivir does not help. Anyone any idea?

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[Edit] The problem is probably not related to uTorrent. I changed the network card (using the onboard network card now). At 2 MB upload, hardware interrupts are now about 9%, so half of the interrupts with the other card.

But does all internet traffic cause these interrupts? I could nod check uploads, because I have no place to upload to. But I tried downloads. And even a download at 5 MB/s did not increase the hardware interrupts.

But uTorrent might use more CPU than Task Manager shows. Windows XP Task Manager does not show Hardware Interrupts. When System-idle Processes show 60%, CPU use is 50%. So uTorrent does not use 15%, as Task Manager shows, but in fact 25%. And that can slow down older machines.

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  • 8 months later...

I am having the same/similar problem here!!! Since I've upgraded to uTorrent 2.x this problem started!

Every time I fire up uTorrent my system crawls to hell!!! I always have been using uTorrent saving directly to my external Maxtor OneTouch 4 Plus 750GB and never had a problem.

Since I've upgraded to version 2.x now it drags the whole system down writing to this drive!

Please HELP!!!! I see a lot of people (posts everywhere) people relating to this same kind of issues with uTorrent and External HDD's.

What I did and actually helped a little bit the performance was the following....

Preferences -> Advance -> Disk Cache ->

[x] Override automatically cache size and specify the size manually (MB): [ 4 ]

By doing this I notice that the overall performance of my system is way better!!

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Hello Andrerio!

I solved my problem by ugrading Avast! Antivirus to version 5, and Outpost Firewall to version 7.

I wrote about it here: http://forum.utorrent.com/viewtopic.php?id=89024

It already helped to upgrade Avast. But shortly after, the problem came back.

But after upgrading the firewal, is was almost all over. Every 4 days or so the problem returns, but then I just restart uTorrent, and everything is OK again.

I permanently have Taskmanager on. But I am always comfortably looking at 15% total CPU use, or so, while uTorrent uploads at 2.5 MB/s.

But before I solved it, everything used a lot of CPU, like: uTorrent 30%, Outpost 30%, and Hardware Interrupts and Deferred Procedure Calls 20%.

Good luck to you, finding the solution! Regards to the uTorrent-team for their exellent work..

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Hello Andrerio!

I solved my problem by ugrading Avast! Antivirus to version 5, and Outpost Firewall to version 7.

I wrote about it here: http://forum.utorrent.com/viewtopic.php?id=89024

It already helped to upgrade Avast. But shortly after, the problem came back.

But after upgrading the firewal, is was almost all over. Every 4 days or so the problem returns, but then I just restart uTorrent, and everything is OK again.

I permanently have Taskmanager on. But I am always comfortably looking at 15% total CPU use, or so, while uTorrent uploads at 2.5 MB/s.

But before I solved it, everything used a lot of CPU, like: uTorrent 30%, Outpost 30%, and Hardware Interrupts and Deferred Procedure Calls 20%.

Good luck to you, finding the solution! Regards to the uTorrent-team for their exellent work..

I use Avast! Internet Security 5.0.677 with its own Firewall! Don't think the problem is with the Avast or Firewall. It has to do with how the new uTorrent handle windows files read/write!

If you uninstall completely uTorrent v2.x and go back to the old ones you'll see that the problem is completely over!

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I use Avast! Internet Security 5.0.677 with its own Firewall! Don't think the problem is with the Avast or Firewall. It has to do with how the new uTorrent handle windows files read/write!
Did you test this with Avast! completely uninstalled to rule it out?

Because there have been other reports about Avast! causing high CPU % even when uTorrent isn't running OR installed!

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I can assure you that Avast is not the issue!

the secondI fired uTorrent my systems start to crumble into peaces and crawls to hell! This was NOT happening with older versions of uTorrent.

And YES! I have tried without AVAST on a test machine! uTorrent drags down tha machine!

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Next year we might hear, we had a security hole, the size of Siberia..

Perhaps the amount of scandaleous American diplomatic emails on Wikileaks then will rise to 500.000 or so.

Oh well.. Life is a risk anyway..

@ Andrerio: At first I blamed the new uTorrent version too, because older versions were working well. But when upgrading Avira and Outpost solved the problem, who can tell what is to blame?

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Next year we might hear, we had a security hole, the size of Siberia..

Perhaps the amount of scandaleous American diplomatic emails on Wikileaks then will rise to 500.000 or so.

Oh well.. Life is a risk anyway..

@ Andrerio: At first I blamed the new uTorrent version too, because older versions were working well. But when upgrading Avira and Outpost solved the problem, who can tell what is to blame?

I am not blaming uTorrent directly. I was basicaly trying to described what happened i my case and what I've done to easy the problem. I've also followed some directions from the post bellow without much success!

http://forum.utorrent.com/viewtopic.php?id=74820

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Well. My problem is not with speed! I never said that! My speed is actually pretty dam good!

I download good seeded torrents usually @ 1.2kb/s as I have a 12mbit connection. So I guess speed wise I have nothing to complaint about it.

My problem is with uTorrent saving directly to an external USB drive.

Thank you all

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