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Level 1

96 points

i5 iMac and Windows 7: Headphone jack usage makes 1 core extra crazy

Hi. I wasn't even sure where to post this, but here goes...

I got a new iMac at the Apple Store a few days ago. The same day, I installed Vista Ultimate. Right away, I noticed that the cpu cores (in Task Manager) were in use, one at about 100%. The overall CPU Usage showed 35%. No apps in use.

To make a long story short, I never could figure it out.

So I went and bought Windows 7 Home Premium upgrade yesterday. Installed that (64-bit). Everything is great, but the cores were still going crazy.

Turns out that when I unplug my speakers from the headphone jack, it drops to 0% cpu usage! The performance didn't seem to have been affected by it, but it bothered me.

Any ideas what that was all about? Is that a driver issue on Apples part? I could assume it is because Apple doesn't support Win7 yet, but the driver cd contains lots of Windows 7 drivers, and it did the same thing in Vista.

Anyway, thanks.

iMac (Late 2009) i5, Mac OS X (10.6.2)

Posted on Nov 20, 2009 6:07 AM

43 replies

Feb 11, 2010 1:02 AM in response to klepsydra

I did a little more digging. The driver was updated by Cirrus Logic on 1/2/2010. They posted an errata to their website at the beginning of February 2010 that describes the hardware problem and the software workaround to avoid it.

http://www.cirrus.com/en/pubs/errata/ER880C1.pdf

Hopefully this means they will be releasing updated drivers soon. You can download drivers directly from Cirrus and it appears the CS4207 and CS4206A (The one in the iMac) share drivers.

Feb 18, 2010 11:05 AM in response to Eric Klinger

I also have the same problem on 27" iMac.
I thought I've got a trojan or a bad Anti-virus or a Search indexer which use the CPU's core, I checked everything... but not the speakers.

Hope, next time my iMac wouldn't hang up because of mousepad.

Thanks, Eric and AXW and FabriceD, for a "solution".

Message was edited by: pablomedok

av01d

Level 1

0 points

Feb 26, 2010 4:05 AM in response to Eric Klinger

One more user with the exact same problem here: a brand new iMac i5, freshly installed Windows 7 Professional (BootCamp). 4th Core always running at 100%.
Hoping for a fix, as we all do 🙂

kohltj

Level 1

0 points

Mar 28, 2010 4:01 PM in response to Eric Klinger

I confirm that this problem exists with my *Intel Core i7 iMac* as well.

crsp

Level 1

0 points

Apr 4, 2010 5:03 AM in response to Eric Klinger

Hi,

same issue here with my i5 27".
My workarround is to use the USB adapter of an Logi USB Headset and plug in the Headset there. I bought that adapter incl. Headset some time ago since the MBP had no Mic IN.

HTH! crsp

lambch0p

Level 1

0 points

Apr 5, 2010 3:30 AM in response to Eric Klinger

Same issue here.

Pllug in headphones, one CPU starts having a melt down. As several people have noted, if you pull the headphone jack out a tiny bit, the CPU usage drops.

Also noticed that a Microphone plugged into the Mic socket has very low recording levels.

jkofr

Level 1

0 points

Apr 7, 2010 5:45 AM in response to FabriceD

Hi All,

Have the same issue and was really worry. I even reinstall my Windows 7 in order to correct what I was suspecting to be a driver issue.

The "Very slightly unplugging the jack" solves the problem for me too.

If think the issue is an electric issue with the connector os something like this.

Let's wait what apple says 😉

Jko

Apr 11, 2010 12:47 AM in response to Eric Klinger

Just add another name to the pile.

Same issue. I usually have music playing, so I never heard the fans going wild, but I'm a little concerned, as I've run it with the CPU use going nuts for hours on end.

Drivers please. Good ones.

Apr 11, 2010 2:30 PM in response to ghostcoins

It's been more than five months since people started complaining about an audio jack issue among other problems. There has got to be a major Bootcamp update from Apple.

boz0

Level 1

0 points

Apr 17, 2010 12:04 PM in response to Eric Klinger

This is fixed with the EFI firmware update released this week. See here : http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1031.

Thanks for the fix, Apple, though, as always, knowing that the problem was being addressed would've been nice!

Apr 19, 2010 7:41 PM in response to Eric Klinger

Thank you for posting this fix. I've bookmarked this thread and checked every day. Excellent...

Apr 20, 2010 9:02 AM in response to boz0

Now with EFI and SMC firmaware updates applied, after waking up the iMac from sleep every sound has a distorted echo.

It's ok after reboot.

jkofr

Level 1

0 points

Apr 21, 2010 3:42 AM in response to pablomedok

It works!!

Many thanks
jko

i5 iMac and Windows 7: Headphone jack usage makes 1 core extra crazy