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General discussion

System health report

I have a 64 bit computer with Vista Ultimate and used advanced tools to generate a system health report.
Diagnostic Results showed a pass on all the system checks and the message "No problems found on this computer" However, a warning showed saying
"High average interrupts / processor. This machine has 2 processors and 8 network cards. Total interrupts/sec on the machine is 12772. The average interrupts per processor per sec is 6386" Please could anyone tell me what this means and is it anything I need to worry about? Thanks.
Mary T

Discussion is locked

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The first place I would look is in the
Jul 8, 2007 3:59AM PDT

Device manager and expand the processors and network Adapters entries,
Post back on what you find.

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Not a major worry, but...
Jul 8, 2007 6:31AM PDT

Basically an interrupt is sent to the processor if data is needed that hasn't been processed yet, telling it to wait. A simple example would be the math problem 2 * (2 + 3). You can't multiply by 2 until you know what 2 + 3 is, so an interrupt would be sent until the answer 5 is returned. It could then do 2 * 5 and give the final answer of 10.

Ideally you would want a low number of interrupts, for every interrupt delays the ultimate calculation and translates to a decrease in efficiency. Poor CPU design, slow components, data loss, and even the design of the applications themselves can all account for this to varying degrees. However, unless you begin having problems as a result of it I wouldn't worry about it too much.

One interesting thing, though, is its report of 8 network cards. That's odd for a home machine, so you may want to see what Device Manager is reporting you actually have and see how many networks you are actually connected to.

John

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Device Manager details
Jul 8, 2007 7:05AM PDT

Thanks John & Retired,

When I expand Processors both are shown as "Intel(R) Core(TM) CPU 6700 @ 2.66GHz"
When I click on them, they both say "This device is working properly"

Network adapters expands into three - 1st is "Broadcom 802.11g". In Properties this device is shown as working properly.
2nd is "NVIDIA nForce Networking Controller" In Properties the device is shown as working properly.
3rd is "NVIDIA nForce Networking Controller #2" This device is also shown as working properly.

There is lots of information in properties for each item, but I am not sure what will be helpful to you.
The computer is a Mesh Elite E6700 Vistra Pro G80

I appreciate your advice, Mary T

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I would agree with John about the processor
Jul 8, 2007 7:42AM PDT

As your unit has the Core Duo processor it most likely will show two in the report and that is OK.

The computer has one on-board LAN card so I'm not sure why it is showing as eight. Did you or someone install another LAN card or maybe a wireless adapter. It's most likely not hurting a thing so long as you have no connectivity problems there is no reason to worry. HOWEVER, If it was mine I would try to find out why all the extras are being reported. Nice Machine BTW.

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Thanks
Jul 8, 2007 8:43AM PDT

Thanks for the advice. I have not added anything to the computer since I bought it, so why it shows 8 cards is a mystery. However, as it's working O.K.I won't worry too much about it.
Mary T