DPC High Latency Issue

[Scofield]

Hello, sorry if this is the wrong sub forum to post this in. I know my way around a forum since I've been in a clan with a forum for 4 years. Anyways, enough of that.

Onto my problem. I will first list my system specs below...

CPU: AMD Athlon XP 2800+ (Barton Core @ 2.12GHz)

RAM: 1.2GB

Hard Drive(s): Main System drive, Western Digital 80 GB (IDE) Second drive (For programs & documents) Seagate Barracuda 120GB (IDE)

Video Card: Powercolor Radoen 9250 (AGP)

Motherboard: ABIT VA-20

PSU (Power Supply Unit): No Name 450Watt (cheap PSU)

Alright, my problem is high latency as you probably have guessed. I had just recently installed Windows 7 Professional on this computer. I was getting sound drop outs in game (I listen to music while playing games) So I found out about DPC Latency Checker. I downloaded it & sure enough I was getting very high latency.

A few green bars then it would spike off the charts. Now, I have just reinstalled Windows after searching for hours for a solution. however, my high latency problem still exists. I do not have a screen shot of the DPC latency checker. I did 2 checks with DPC latency checker. The first revealed that ndis.sys was the cause of my high latency.

I then went into the BIOS & disabled all the stuff I either don't need or never use. (Floppy drive, it's controller, S-ATA on board controller, on board sound, on board LAN, & I even disabled my USB ports thinking they were the cause of the latency issue)

Upon further testing (with the on board LAN disabled) I have the report shown below... NOTE you may have to zoom in to see the report clearly.

Now, as you can see, Wdf01000.sys is the cause of the high latency (or at least it's the one with the highest latency) From what I understand, this is an import process, part of the system kernel itself? Oh yes, I am pretty knowledgeable with computers.

Anyways, I know this system isn't the best, & I also know my video card isn't fully supported. However, I have ruled that out as a suspect. On my previous Windows installation upon receiving high latency, I uninstalled the video driver (I found a driver online that worked with my card)

No Catalyst Control Center, but that's no big deal. Anyways, I uninstalled the driver because my first impression was of course the video card driver, since the card isn't really Direct X 9 compatible. However, it turned out my video card driver was not the cause.

As I said previously, I have just reinstalled Windows & I haven't begun to install the video driver. Yet I'm getting the large spikes (off the charts) in the red during idle times. If you need anymore info please don't hesitate to ask.

Thank you very much in advance for your time

~Chris

Edited October 27, 2010 by Scofield

[cluberti]

wdf01000.sys is the kernel-mode portion of the Windows Driver Framework, meaning the DPC is coming from a driver that is loaded and using the KDF. From what you've said so far and what the pictures say, we can be sure it's a kernel-mode driver (rather than user mode). We can also be fairly certain it's going to be a network driver, given previous attempts showed ndis.dys (the network driver subsystem) and the current picture seems to indicate netio.sys is probably what's causing the KDF in this case.

What network card are you using, and what drivers do you have installed for it?

[Scofield]

I am using the on board LAN provided by my motherboard:

VIA Rhine II Fast Ethernet Adapter

Yes that is correct, I did see that ndis.sys was the cause for the high latency. I downloaded the driver direct from VIA. The driver version is below...

Driver Provider: VIA

Driver Date: 8/6/2010

Driver Version: 1.13.0.2

Digital Signer: Microsoft Windows Hardware Compatibility Publisher

I will disable the on board LAN in device manager, then do another DPC check then report back.

~Chris

Edited October 27, 2010 by Scofield

[cluberti]

Good luck.

[Scofield]

Back. I have included a screen shot of the DPC Latency Checker below. I don't know if the first red bar is because I first opened the checker or what. Usually the bars go off the chart as with the second one.

Here is a screen shot of the Xperf report.

It seems ataport.SYS is the cause of high latency when the on board LAN is disabled. Note, at this point in time, I don't have hardly anything enabled. On board sound is disabled, all my USB ports are disabled, just to narrow down the trouble maker.

My hard drivers are IDE so, I can't exactly get rid of them. However, would this be an outdated chipset driver issue? Thanks for your help thus far.

~Chris

Edited October 27, 2010 by Scofield

[cluberti]

Can you save your report and zip/attach it here?

[Scofield]

This site only allowed uploads of 500K so I uploaded it to a different site, I hope that's no trouble. Also you'll need to wait a few seconds before downlaod (the site makes you wait)

This one is when I had my LAN enabled....

LAN Enabled

This is when I disabled it....

LAN Disabled

Again sorry for the trouble.

~Chris

[Scofield]

UPDATE: I have just updated every possible driver on here. Checked with driver detective (just to see if they were all updated) they are all updated now. Had a little trouble finding a PCI network card for Windows 7 (all the ones I have are too old) So I'm stuck with on board. I just did a check, for your convenience, I have made up a report (just one) Which I will attach to my post so then you can just open it or whatever. It looks like ataport.SYS has a little high latency, but I updated the IDE controller that I have on this board (VIA Master Bus IDE Controller 0571) It has the latest driver.

Oh, and sorry if I shouldn't have double posted. I just thought I'd give you a report instead of making you download those 2 huge ones. Besides, those ones above, are "before" I updated each driver. In the report, the very top, seems to have the most, although I have no idea what it's referring too.

latency_report.txt

Edited November 1, 2010 by Scofield

[puntoMX]

Now, without digging trough the whole OS, I would check what is on the ATA/IDE channels, so, what is hanging on those ports and how are the jumpers on those devices placed? VIA can be very picky with drive configurations. And yes, Iknow, in XP it would work fine, and that was due to drivers that did some work around. So, drop that info of those drives here please.

[MagicAndre1981]

Hi Chris, your PC is too old. Only 1250MB RAM, an old Athlon XP (single core), a Radeon 9200 (no directX 9 so no Aero). And you are missing several updates. You use an early LDR kernel update from sep 2009.

Stay at Xp or buy a new PC.

Edited November 2, 2010 by MagicAndre1981

[puntoMX]

Too old? That PC would run windows 7 nicely when you use it for office and internet apps. But yes, I blame the hardware too.

[Scofield]

I'll admit, this thing is a little old, the only thing lacking in here is the video card, the Radeon 9250 isn't a great card at all. However, it seems to run Windows 7 fine. Apart from the latency issue which seems to have improved since I downloaded updated drivers for my VIA IDE controller. It runs it quite well. Punto, I don't understand what you mean by "So, drop that info of those drives here please." can you clearify that a little more? Oh, and as of now, I'm able to run the checker for a record of 5 minutes during idle. Latency stays under 100us (usually around 29-50) Also, when I was playing a movie using Media Player the latency went into the red again. Is that normal? as soon as I turned off Media Player it went back down to 29us.

Oh, and Magic, I'm running Windows XP SP3 on a 300MHz Klamath Pentium II with 256MB of RAM and an old 1x AGP video card. Latencies on that machine are all in the green. I don't think hardware has much to do with latency.

Should I do a test and leave the checker running overnight do you think? I want to take this opportunity to thank all of you for your help. I wouldn't have gotten this far with out it!

~Chris

Edited November 2, 2010 by Scofield

[puntoMX]

Oh, and Magic, I'm running Windows XP SP3 on a 300MHz Klamath Pentium II with 256MB of RAM and an old 1x AGP video card. Latencies on that machine are all in the green. I don't think hardware has much to do with latency.

Think again than.

What I was asking you is how and what is connected to the ATA/IDE connectors on the motherboard and if you could drop, as in write and post it here, that info in this topic.

Faulty connected harddrives and mixed on the same cable with ATA optical drives could get you high latencies too as the driver and/or controller has to wait for the other hardware to "answer".

Good luck.

[bonestonne]

Try a BIOS update, but no guarantees that it's going to make much of a difference. For some it does, for some it doesn't.

[Scofield]

I have 2 hard drives. My main C drive is a Western Digital connected as a "master" My second drive, a Seagate Barracuda, is connected as a "slave" to the WD drive. No optical drives are on the same IDE channel as the hard drive. Isn't it better to have "one" hard drive per channel? I heard a slave drive hurts performance. Oh, and I've plugged in a USB mouse. It now seems usbport.SYS is the high latency culprit now.

As seen in the attached report. I have a question, all the modules stay under 1.00% CPU usage (if I'm reading the report right) Doesn't a module that cause high latency have to use more than 1% of the CPU? Also, I'm not going to do a BIOS upgrade. I've heard some pretty freaky stories. Computers not being able to boot after the update, rendering them useless... Sure this BIOS is a little outdated (2005) but it serves my needs.

Update, I have tired it again. This time I moved my mouse fast over top of my desktop icons. The spikes went into the red. I knew it was the USBport.SYS As seen in this updated report, USBport.SYS uses 1.06% of my CPU the highest I've seen so far. If I'm playing a game, and using this mouse, those latencies will effect performance. NOTE the updated report is the bottom one.

latency_report.txt

latency_report.txt

Edited November 3, 2010 by Scofield