Samsung Series 7 Chronos One core is stuck at ~100% (NP700Z5C-S02UB)

I've got a weird problem that I asked about on superuser.com. Got a suggestion, but nothing that worked (original question: One CPU core stuck at 100% doing kernel stuff - Super User).

I'm copy-pasting the same question here:

A few days ago I started experiencing a weird issue - one core was stuck at 100% doing some kernel stuff. This problem is NOT OS specific: it occurs in Windows 7 (including Safe Mode), Ubuntu 12.04 installed on the hard drive and Ubuntu 12.04 on live USB.

What I've tried so far:

• Different OSes
• Disabling hyperthreading (with hyperthreading enabled, only one thread gets locked, not the whole core)
• Resetting BIOS
• Updated BIOS from P03ABJ to P05ABJ
• Re-installed Windows 7

My system:

• Samsung Series 7 Chronos (NP700Z5C-S02UB)
• Core i7-3635QM CPU
• Windows 7 Professional SP1 or Ubuntu 12.04

EDIT: So this is a bit bizarre. I "reset" the laptop and re-installed Win7. After a short while the problem disappeared both in Windows AND Linux. Now, after installing Intel chipset drivers the problem is back again.

I'm at a loss as to what could be causing this. Any ideas?

Thanks!

 

This is a known issue with BIOS P06AAE. The fix is to go back to an earlier BIOS (or get Samsung to release a newer one without this bug).

John

 

Hey John, thanks for the reply.

I will definitely give this a try. However, I must note (and I'll update my posts in a sec) that this this problem started when I had P03ABJ BIOS. I updated to P05ABJ (latest available according to Samsung's BIOS Update tool) and the problem persisted.

MK

 

OK. Google for "site: Samsung Notebook Forum high CPU utilization NP700Z5C" (and other similar wordings) to find more discussion about this issue.

John

 

I see that the forum software is messing up my instructions:

It should read "site:forum.notebookreview.com /samsung/ high CPU utilization NP700Z5C"

John

 

No worries. I've been doing research for the last two days and probably got tunnel vision so I never actually searched for those phrases. Anyhow, I was able to somewhat mitigate the problem by installing Intel Rapid Storage drivers. However, like others, I'm still getting weird CPU usage for the first couple of minutes or so. I really like the laptop but this issue is really disappointing.

 

I should have remembered the Rapid Storage issue.

Activity during the first couple of minutes is probably housekeeping and/or virus scanning. The easiest way to avoid that is to use sleep / hibernation to minimise the restarts.

John