Latency problems, probably due to corrupt drivers

Discussion in 'Software' started by DH-, Sep 9, 2009.

  1. DH-

    DH- Private E-2

    Hello all! I'm new here and i'm in need of some help, getting almost desperate. :-D

    Anyways first things first. I'm a DJ, i use my laptop to stream audio and so i need to have a good latency. For this i've recently bought a new laptop. It's the Acer 7738G-904G50MN. Quad core CPU, 4GB DDR3 memory, 500GB harddrive,... it's perfect!

    So i thought it was perfect. I completely installed it and spent most of my time removing alle the games that acer delivers with the laptop. I fired up VDJ and noticed that at some points the audio just stops for about a second and then just starts again. Seemed very strange. First thing i do is fire up DPC Latency checker and this is what i see:

    [​IMG]

    Nightmare! Driver problems!
    I've spent hours trying to solve this by disabling every device in the device manager one by one, but still to no avail...


    I had to get this laptop working by this weekend, so i just reformatted. It's a brand new laptop so i didn't really have much on there, and probably nothing that wasn't backed up...
    Right after i reformatted the problem still existed, so i'm assuming something went wrong with installing some basic drivers. I checked this with driver agent and got this result.

    [​IMG]

    USB host controllers?? :\ Well i went to the Acer site, downloaded chipset drivers and installed, but did not work. I'm on unknown ground here so i didn't start experimenting to make it work and came here. Can anybody help me in this? I would be very grateful. :)
     
  2. satrow

    satrow Major Geek Extraordinaire

    Hi and welcome to Majorgeeks forums :)

    When installing or reinstalling Windows, the chipset drivers should be loaded first, this will allow Windows to 'see' other devices.

    Attach an Everest report please, we may be able to figure out what the other devices are.

    If you're using wireless to connect to the Internet, switch to wired ethernet and test latency again.

    Check in Control Panel > Task Scheduler for any scheduled apps, Defrag has been a major cause of slowdown for some, there may be others; disable them all for a period of testing.
     
  3. DH-

    DH- Private E-2

    Ok, i disabled scheduled defrag (and executed it too, but there was nothing much to defragment). I disabled the other tasks too, but there appeared to be nothing out of the ordinary.

    The latency problems kept occuring when disconnected from the internet and having both devices (wireless + wired) disabled in the device management.

    I've uploaded my report to Mediafire as it's 325kb (more then the max filesize) :). click


    EDIT: something strange with Everest though... It sees my CPU as a dual core Pentium III processor.
     
  4. satrow

    satrow Major Geek Extraordinaire

    The only unknown hardware references I noticed were all Logitech mouse-related, yet your MX320 looks like it's installed correctly, perhaps there's an updated driver from Logitech you could try?
    Do not install the Logitech Desktop software, it's likely to cause problems.

    Can you disconnect from the Internet and disable the AVG resident on-access file scanner, also disable any on-access component used by the Comodo Firewall (HIPS?)? Test and report back please :)
     
  5. DH-

    DH- Private E-2

    After updating the logitech drivers and directx and closing every program i could close the latency still was extremely high.

    [​IMG]
     
  6. DavidGP

    DavidGP MajorGeeks Forum Administrator - Grand Pooh-Bah Staff Member

    Hi

    Everest Free, doesnt know Intel Core 2 or Quads properly so lists them in one section as PIII or Xenons, its not a major issue.

    Is your Vista 32bit or 64bit, not noticed in the Everest report? to find out click Start and type winver in the Start Search box and hit enter.

    I would try installing the last known Chipset from Intel for the PM45 Mobile chipset from here then reboot.

    I would also as a tip, never advise you believe what these driver finder apps tell you as they are hit and miss and do not know all permutations of drivers that are needed.

    What app are you playing music through to stream and are you straming via the net or direct to a sound system in a club etc? if its an application thats not a Windows built in one like WMP then what is that application and does it have Vista compatablity.

    Do you have any codec packs installed, if so what ones? uninstall all of them and run CCleaner to give the temps and registry a clean and then install this one http://majorgeeks.com/download.php?det=5326 if you need a codec pack for your music.

    This may or may not work, but test some music in Safe Mode with Networking.

    DirectX, what did you update on this and where from, if you have link would be great as Vista's DirectX has not been updated since coming only with Service Pack 1 for Vista, in DirectX 10.1.


    Try this app, Process Explorer and play some music and see what in the list of running apps is taking up or spiking with CPU time, may find the culprit this way
     
  7. satrow

    satrow Major Geek Extraordinaire

    Were your network and wireless adapters disabled during the last screenshot of DPC?

    Which processes are consistently using high CPU when streaming?

    Sometimes it's not enough to close security apps, often they remain active :(; you need to completely disable them or use their control panels/options to enable/disable features.

    Following on from Halo's comments;-
    Process Hacker is another useful tool for checking on running processes.

    Also, perhaps we should track down updated drivers for other components directly from the chip-makers sites for those devices you must have operational during streaming.
     
  8. DH-

    DH- Private E-2

    Okay one by one:
    - I have a 32bit OS.
    - I tried the install of the latest chipset drivers, made no difference.
    - The driver apps were mostly to use as a "quick fix" :)
    - I'm using Virtual DJ. It worked perfectly on my last vista laptop. Although i would doubt if this was the problem. DPC Latency checker shows giant peaks the minute i start my PC after a reset to factory settings. It has to be caused before that.
    - No codec packs are installed yet, laptop is brand new.
    - I've updated to DirectX10, i had 9.0c.
    - I can't notice any CPU spikes at the moment i was playing music.




    - Both were disabled.
    - No processes are using any CPU worth noting.
    - The latency problems showed before any security apps were installed.
    - In the last possible scenario i would manually recheck every driver, but that's an annoying job. Other possibilities are welcome. :)
     
  9. DH-

    DH- Private E-2

  10. satrow

    satrow Major Geek Extraordinaire

    You really need to cut down some of those running services and processes to simplify the troubleshooting, almost 80 were running during your logging session and I would guess that 20+ are not necessary.

    Please study the Blackviper site very carefully. I suggest you try using the 'Safe' settings first; there is a page with a fast method of implementing the 'Safe' services settings.

    To cleanup the unneeded processes that startup with Windows, please study and follow this guide. Cross reference entries with this site and/or this site and use Startup CPL to disable the entries. If you are unsure of whether a startup entry is needed or not, post back here.

    You do not need to be connected to the Internet for testing purposes, so turn off or disable all networking devices/antivirus/firewall/anti-malware apps please.

    Test and post a new Xperf log and screenshot of your Task Manager processes list if you still have problems with high disk I/O.
     
  11. DH-

    DH- Private E-2

  12. satrow

    satrow Major Geek Extraordinaire

    Good to see you are now down to around 65 processes but there is still some way to go to get a clean boot for our purposes.

    The latest log looks like it is from very early in the boot process where Vista is still preloading data that it thinks you may need - please send a new log from later in the boot process, when Vista is truly ready to operate.
     
  13. DH-

    DH- Private E-2

    I've uninstalled AVG to make sure. Rebooted, disabled firewall and then closed it along with every other program i could. After that i let it run for 5 minutes without doing anything. From that moment on: here's the Xperf log. What i notice is that there is a lot of HD activity and regular peaks of DPC's. Hope you can make something out of this. :)

    http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?mwldz4zinju
     
  14. DH-

    DH- Private E-2

    Update: I've made a seperate partition and installed windows 7. It solved the problem of the 1000µs peaks but it still had the regular 18 000+ µs peaks.

    I've also tried to play a game, which kinda worked fine. The sound of the game dropped out regulary but no huge problems untill it dropped out completely, not coming back. After that everything goes wrong. The game freezes when i try to save, i can't run anything that even remotely needs some graphic power after that. If i try to reboot, everything shuts down fine, but my computer does not power off, it just stays on with a black screen (because vista shut down).

    The more i search for the problem, the stranger it gets.


    I've mailed Acer about this a few days ago, but no response yet.
     
  15. satrow

    satrow Major Geek Extraordinaire

    The earlier Xperf logs showed acpi.sys as the most common cause of high latency with frequent spikes. There were also occasional very large spikes from dxgkrnl.sys.

    Have you looked for an updated BIOS for this machine?

    You may find something of interest in this thread.
     
  16. DH-

    DH- Private E-2

    There were no BIOS updates available, there was a downgrade available... So i just went for it (why not). It made no difference. During boot i always see a spike of around 19 000µs in DPC checker.
     
  17. DH-

    DH- Private E-2

    Okay i've narrowed it down some more. It definately has something to do with USB.

    When just listening to music, the sound stutters quite often and such. When I give my pc a little more work (loading a song/opening firefox) it just completely drops out at one point - so no more sound.
    Why it's certainly something with the USB? Well, after having lost the sound card completely, every app that tries to access the soundcard freezes. And i'm really talking about every app. If i lost my soundcard while listening to songs on WMP, WMP would freeze. If i try to watch a youtube clip after that, firefox freezes. If i try to play a game, it freezes. If i try to access the "sound" category in the control panel, the window freezes. If i try to disable the soundcard in device management... it freezes!

    Could this be faulty hardware? I still haven't recieved an answer from Acer support. (And that just sucks!)
     
  18. DH-

    DH- Private E-2

    Okay just for the record. This issue is solved. How?

    The 1000 µs spikes were solved by installing windows 7 (m$ actually fixed something!).
    After a lot of reading i came up with a solution for the 18 000 µs+ peaks. It appears that my graphic card (nVidia Geforce GT130M) has a function called "Powermizer". This is a function that decreases your graphic card's clock speed when not in use. Problem was that this function (which causes alot of latency) did not function properly. When opening firefox for example, the graphic card would kick up its clock speed and immediately after it was opened, it would be decreased again. This constant piling up of high latency clock speed changes was causing hiccups, crackles and dropouts in my sound.

    Solution is a program called "Nv GPU Pro", which allows you to disable this function completely. (And -as i never work on battery power alone- i don't need to save power so i completely disabled it.) So: to anyone who is facing super-high latency peaks from time to time: try this. :)

    Computer is working flawless right now. Thanks for all your help, i wouldn't have found the issue without your help.
     

MajorGeeks.Com Menu

Downloads All In One Tweaks \ Android \ Anti-Malware \ Anti-Virus \ Appearance \ Backup \ Browsers \ CD\DVD\Blu-Ray \ Covert Ops \ Drive Utilities \ Drivers \ Graphics \ Internet Tools \ Multimedia \ Networking \ Office Tools \ PC Games \ System Tools \ Mac/Apple/Ipad Downloads

Other News: Top Downloads \ News (Tech) \ Off Base (Other Websites News) \ Way Off Base (Offbeat Stories and Pics)

Social: Facebook \ YouTube \ Twitter \ Tumblr \ Pintrest \ RSS Feeds