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"Interrupts" - killing my CPU!

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nosh:
My system really choked today while copying a few large files from a DVD on my machine to another PC on the network.
Process Explorer showed "Interrupts" lingering between 30 and 45(!)% CPU. I disabled the firewall which was eating another 20% but the PC still somewhat stuttered. Once the copying finished it immediately reached its normal idle state ~80% free. I realise hardware interrupts are integral to hardware access but is there some way to alleviate the situation? Perhaps a BIOS/firmware/system setting that could be tweaked? Maybe better quality media? :) I've never had the PC slow down this bad under similar circumstances in the past.

f0dder:
Check device manager and see if any of you IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers are set to PIO mode rather than DMA - my guess is that they are, and this query will help you :)

Carol Haynes:
80% idle is normal ??? Is that 20% for your Firewall - if so what the heck are you using?

Darwin:
Good piece of advice on the PIO/DMA check. I *just* fixed this problem on my wife's laptop after months of beating my head against a wall and two days after doubling the RAM (my 5 year then dumped it on the floor and broke both the monitor and the power connection...). This made a machine that was almost unusable a SPEED DEMON. Stupidly, I used to have this problem with an old notebook and should have thought to check it long ago...

Darwin:
PS This is the tip page that finally allowed me to fix my wife's notebook (it was refusing to change to DMA prior to working through the advice on this page): http://winhlp.com/node/10 - first hit on f0dder's search

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