Halmacpi.dll problem

[BlueEyes88]

Hi,

This is a repost from yesterday but I changed the thread title as I have noticed how many other threads have this name and have gone unsolved. None that I have seen have the issue I have. Anyway read on if you think you can help.

Ok I have had issues with my PC the last 3 days or at least I noticed it 3 days ago, it could have been like that a little longer. I ran Black Ops and noticed it was frequently pausing etc. It seemed odd as I never had such issues prior. I checked Task Manager and the CPU was spiking between 49% to 100%. Through using Process Explorer it showed System and System Idle were the processes that were spiking. I looked at the properties of both and the results showed in System 49% CPU usage by ACPI.sys and on the System Idle there were two instances of ntklmpa.exe!KiDispatchInterrupt+0x650 chewing up 27% and 23%.

After some searching I found ways to diagnose further and used Kernrate and KrView to find a dll called halmacpi.dll was the culprit with a very high number of hits. I have the jpg's of the checks but don't know how to post them as it requested a url address for me to do that.

I have no idea what to do and was hoping someone here can help. I have run Hijackthis, Malwarebytes, Memtest, SPybot and Avast and have come up with nothing.

As you can imagine its driving me nuts.

My system is:

Windows 7 Ultimate 32bit
Intel i5 760
Asustek P7P55D-E LX mainboard
4GB G-skill ripjaws DDR3 RAM
Geforce GTX460 graphics

Any more info required just ask.

Thanks in advance

Steve

 

[hedwar2011]

Hi,

This is a repost from yesterday but I changed the thread title as I have noticed how many other threads have this name and have gone unsolved. None that I have seen have the issue I have. Anyway read on if you think you can help.

Ok I have had issues with my PC the last 3 days or at least I noticed it 3 days ago, it could have been like that a little longer. I ran Black Ops and noticed it was frequently pausing etc. It seemed odd as I never had such issues prior. I checked Task Manager and the CPU was spiking between 49% to 100%. Through using Process Explorer it showed System and System Idle were the processes that were spiking. I looked at the properties of both and the results showed in System 49% CPU usage by ACPI.sys and on the System Idle there were two instances of ntklmpa.exe!KiDispatchInterrupt+0x650 chewing up 27% and 23%.

After some searching I found ways to diagnose further and used Kernrate and KrView to find a dll called halmacpi.dll was the culprit with a very high number of hits. I have the jpg's of the checks but don't know how to post them as it requested a url address for me to do that.

I have no idea what to do and was hoping someone here can help. I have run Hijackthis, Malwarebytes, Memtest, SPybot and Avast and have come up with nothing.

As you can imagine its driving me nuts.

My system is:

Windows 7 Ultimate 32bit
Intel i5 760
Asustek P7P55D-E LX mainboard
4GB G-skill ripjaws DDR3 RAM
Geforce GTX460 graphics

Any more info required just ask.

Thanks in advance

Steve

Halmacpi.dll is the Windows HAL (Hardware Abstraction Layer) working on the computer hence the spike in the System and System Idle process. Seeing spikes under the System Idle Process is normal as it shows when the system is idle and not being used.

It honestly could be something causing the pausing in the game from startup.

It's time you take a look at everything running and starting up when your computer does.

I would recommend using Autoruns.

Not sure what all those things are? Go to HERE for help with identifying those pesky startup items.

Try that and let me know if the issues continue.

P.S. The halmacpi.dll name is clickable up there. You know you want to..... :lol:

Sorry, it's been one of those days

 

[BlueEyes88]

Thanks for your response. I have ran Autoruns and nothing points me to anything to do with the halmacpi.dll thing other than Kernrate. Other explorers helpers etc seem to give more of a generic outlook on the problem. It looks to me like some kind of hardware/driver issue but all drivers are up to date and everything reports as fine. I usually look towards graphics or memory but they seem ok. I have already stopped all startup progs in msconfig but made no difference. I have unplugged DVD/CD burners, swapped the RAM in their slots, taken the vid card out. Removed dust etc, checked connections. The halmacpi thing is to do with the dual/multi core of the cpu but have no idea what could affect that. I have noticed in Device Manager listed under "other devices" a Universal Serial Bus (USB) Controller - it gives this location (PCI bus 2, device 0, function 0) with an issue and in properties it states "the drivers for this device are not installed (code 28)" When I click on update driver it says Windows could not find driver software for your device.

Shrug

 

[aicom]

KiDispatchInterrupt is part of NT's DPC dispatching code. It's called from HAL via HalpDispatchInterrupt to handle DISPATCH_LEVEL interrupts.

One of your device drivers is likely queuing way too many DPCs. There could be various reasons why this happens but start by making sure all your drivers are up to date (not just from the OEM's website, actually check the website of the manufacturer of each component). Less likely it could also be a hardware failure causing an interrupt storm (and requiring the driver to queue DPCs to handle the interrupts). In any case, this is definitely not normal behavior. I'd try reinstalling Windows at this point. It's really not worth debugging a dirty system.

 

[BlueEyes88]

Ran Uniblue Driverscanner and found 19 driver updates (I know what the hell hahaha). Downloaded all updates and the problem is still there. Very annoying. The suggestion on a fresh install of Win7 is almost an invitation to upgrade to me which I don't really wanna do . Any other ideas?

 

[BlueEyes88]

I have done a repair/upgrade install and it changed nothing Does this point more towards hardware would you say?

 

[hedwar2011]

I have done a repair/upgrade install and it changed nothing Does this point more towards hardware would you say?

Honestly, you are exerting a lot of effort for something that you won't be able to fix. Do I think it is hardware related? No, I don't because every process you mentioned in your initial thread is part of Windows and is a normal process.

There may truly be nothing you can do to stop those processes from using so much, its part of something that you can't change unfortunately.

More information on ACPI.sys and what it is can be found HERE .

There have been rumors of a virus that attacks the ACPI.SYS file but there are no security bulletins from Symantec that are of any importance on it.

I wish I could tell you more but it appears that you are trying to change something that doesn't need changing.

 

[BlueEyes88]

If it wouldn't need changing why would it use 50-100% of cpu? Certainly isn't normal behaviour and the Kernrate pointed to halmacpi.dll.

 

[hedwar2011]

It's an idle process. It will use that much and when something else or another program needs access to those resources it gives it up.

You've done a repair/upgrade install and the "problem" still exists. The only way you will truly "fix" the issue and it may not even doing this is to completely reinstall Windows, including erasing everything off the drive, deleting the partition, and then recreating the partition and doing a clean reinstall. If you want to make sure that you've gotten everything off the system you can create a Hirens CD and do a low level format on the drive before reinstalling.

 

[BlueEyes88]

Ok thanks.