High CPU usage PowerChute 2.2 after resume from sleep in Windows 7

[Anonymous user]

After resuming from sleep after installing PowerChute 2.2
One of My quad cpu is at %80 total usage is %28.
Using process explorer I found that ACPI.SYS is using most of the CPU cycles.

[Erasmus_apc]

ACPI is not the PowerChute process. ACPI is the Windows Advanced Configuration and Power Interface service, which manages system devices and how they behave in terms of power options, how they are integrated into power management between other devices, etc. Coming out of sleep, ACPI would need to handle all system devices being restored to full working status and "talking" to the OS to establish the state the system is in (sleep vs. normal, etc.). Sleep is not recommended for use with our PowerChute software because it generally disables the USB or serial ports used to communicate to and from the UPS, which would prevent graceful shutdown during a power outage. Also, when returning from sleep the USB or serial communication would have to struggle to poll for connection over and over and often we see that after coming out of sleep, a customer's computer will not re-initialize PowerChute comm.

Anyway, ACPI.sys is not PowerChute, although it could be taking up more system resources because PowerChute is trying to re-establish communication to the UPS through the port the UPS connects into on your computer. That is a stretch, but technically possible.

Edit: The PowerChute process is generally seen as "mainserv.exe", or "apcsystray.exe*32" or something very similar. Does this show up as a process in Task Manager? What is it's CPU/system utilization? Does your PowerChute GUI/program show that UPS communication is okay?

Message was edited by: Erasmus

[Anonymous user]

I am running PowerChute 2.2 + patch on a Win7 x64 system, and have been getting mainserv.exe crashes upon resumption from sleep. You say that "sleep is not recommended" with PowerChute. I realize why, but what do you recommend instead to conserve power? How should I configure the power option on the system to best work with PowerChute? Will future versions of PowerChute correct this problem? Do PowerChute instructions mention that sleep should be disabled?

Thank you...

[BillP]

Thank you for using the APC Forum Barnaby.

One thing that you can do to conserve power is enabling the hibernation option on your system. On Windows Vista hibernate is not enabled by default, I am not sure with Windows 7. I found some links that I hope would help you enabled hibernation on Windows 7. In certain cases if sleep mode is used, it tends to cut off the power on the USB ports of the PC if this happens once the UPS goes to on low battery and needs to send a command to the PC for it to turn off it might fail.

Helpful Links:

http://www.intowindows.com/how-to-enable-hibernate-option-in-windows-7
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/920730

JonPro

[Anonymous user]

Here is info on the crash from Action Center Reliability History:

Faulting application name: mainserv.exe, version: 2.2.0.0, time stamp: 0x49642ccb
Faulting module name: mainserv.exe, version: 2.2.0.0, time stamp: 0x49642ccb
Exception code: 0xc0000005
Fault offset: 0x00053d2c
Faulting process id: 0x768
Faulting application start time: 0x01cb07da54981405
Faulting application path: C:\Program Files (x86)\APC\APC PowerChute Personal Edition\mainserv.exe
Faulting module path: C:\Program Files (x86)\APC\APC PowerChute Personal Edition\mainserv.exe
Report Id: 9693f17d-7428-11df-8a5a-00248c32501b

I had to enable the service to restart upon failure in services.exe. The crash does not occur every time the box resumes from sleep. Other pertinent apps: Killer Bigfoot Network Manager v6 for Killer Xeno Pro NIC, Symantec Endpoint Protection RU6a. My UPS is a Back-UPS XS 1000.

The patch for PCPE 2.2 is for XP/Vista, not Win7. Will you release a Win7 version of that patch?

[Anonymous user]

It happened ever since it was installed. I already had to remove/reinstall everything once as it was crashing too often. The 2.2 patch seemed to help. Resuming from sleep seems to be the only cause/pattern I can find. I have an Alienware Area 51 X58 (Core i7 940) with a GTX 295 vcard and a 1000 watt power supply. Sometimes I get PowerChute errors saying that the UPS is overloaded, but not too often. Here are tech details:

Model: Back-UPS RS 1000
Serial number: JB0413059172
Firmware revision: 7.g8.D
Software version: PowerChute Personal Edition 2.2 Patch 1
Date of last manual self-test: 6/8/2010
Result of last manual self-test: Passed
RAM: 6 GB
Free disk space: 650,044 MB

Does all that look ok?

Thanks...

[Anonymous user · Accepted solution]

Thank you for checking on this. The mainserv crash hasn't occurred for the week, even with sleep enabled as usual, so the problem does not (currently) appear to be very severe.