Surface Pro 3 High CPU load when idle, high system cpu load

Question

Has anyone else noticed that coming out of sleep or herniate results in unwarranted high cpu load from system interrupts? 

I have all the latest firmware and updates loaded. But using sleep even sometimes a cold boot I get this issue.

How can I fix this please. Its killing my battery life.

Answer 1

Hi jiachengguo,

Thank you for reaching out to the Microsoft Community! Sorry to know that you are facing battery issues with your new Surface Pro 3. I can see how concerning this is to you, so please know we will do our best to help and guide you in the right direction!

In order to better assist you, I will need to gather a few more details:

• Have you made any changes to the power settings? And if so, what exact changes have you made?
• Do you have any startup or background apps running?
• Do you have a micro SD card inserted or any accessories and Bluetooth devices connected? If so, please disconnect or remove any external accessories and test it again.
• Have you restarted the Surface and then set it to sleep after the restart? If not, please do so as well.
• Have you tried resetting the power settings back to the default settings? If you haven't, here is how:

1. From Desktop, swipe in from the right edge of the screen and open the Charms menu
2. Select Settings
3. Select Control Panel
4. Select Power options
5. Select Change plan settings
6. Select Restore default settings for this plan
7. Select Yes
8. Restart your Surface

Additionally, for further reference, all available battery information and tips on how to make it last longer, can be found in the next support article that applies for Surface Pro 2 and Pro 3:

• Surface Pro battery and power

We hope this information proves useful. Please keep us posted!

We are here to help!

Best Wishes,

Answer 2

Oh!! I just checked it again as I wanted to make a screenshot and now it's working! I don't know what changed. The only thing I did was that I originally enabled Hyper-V but when it started interfering with my WiFi connectivity I disabled it again, so maybe that's what was necessary.. I used to have constant high "System Interrupts" process running, but disabling one by one I found out that an Adobe startup process was causing it, so I disabled it and it seems to have fixed the issue. Either way, thanks for your responses!

Answer 3

Dear Clare,

No, this is not what I was asking. Please refer to the original question.

Perhaps you may have something running in the background.

Answer 4

Hi all,

sorry to ask so many questions.. Another one: I wonder why the SP3 doesn't down-clock the CPU when idle? On my SP1 it used to go all the way down to 800MHz when idle and gradually clock up if needed but on my SP3 it's constantly at 2.5GHz, which I'm assuming results in much higher battery use and heat. Any idea how to enable dynamic clock speed like it was on the SP1?

Thanks!

Answer 5

Hi Laurynas P, 

Welcome to the community and thank you for your question. I understand that you want to know how to conserve battery power on your Pro 3 device. I'm here to help. 

On a Pro 3 device, you can still customize your own Power plans to conserve battery power by doing the following steps: 

1. Open Power Options by swiping in from the right edge of the screen, tapping Search (or if you're using a mouse, pointing to the upper-right corner of the screen, moving the mouse pointer down, and then clicking Search), entering Power options in the search box, and tapping or clicking Power options.
2. Tap or click Create a power plan and follow the instructions.

Let us know if yo have other questions or concerns in the future. 

Best Regards, 

Clare