DWM.exe stuck at 10-12% cpu, causing stuttering

[Brill]

Can't find a solution to this. There are occurrences where dwm.exe will start using 10-12% of cpu and cause stuttering when trying to do anything. Most common occurrence is after a program crashes, but has happened randomly at other times. When it happens, only recourse is to reboot. In the past, it only happens once a week. Annoying, but I dealt with it. Lately, getting more and more frequent. Happened 3 times in an hour this past weekend and is becoming a daily occurrence.

Video drivers up to date. Tried a fresh reinstall of video drivers. Tried the fix noted in this thread: AERO themes causes severe lag in the web browsers. Solved - Windows 7 Help Forums

None of the above has worked. Can't find a task to kill and restart when it happens. If I kill dwm.exe, the process comes back up in the cpu hogging/'stuttering mode.

 

[Ranger4]

Hi Brill, welcome to the Forum.

Are you using Windows Aero?. if so this can cause stuttering, so try disabling Aero & see if that fixes it.

 

[Brill]

Disabling aero will make it go away, but it never did this before.

 

[Ranger4]

Thai NVIDIA website might help you. Have you tried rolling back to an earlier video driver. A quick rad through this website seemed to point to a possible video drive problem.

https://forums.geforce.com/default/topic/776465/multi-monitor-setup-massive-desktop-game-lag-dwm-exe-nvidia-driver-issue-/

 

[Brill]

I haven't rolled back drivers. I've been on numerous versions of drivers. All having the issue. The older driver was the more frequent the issue seemed to occur(until recently).

As far as disabling Aero goes, the specfic setting is desktop composition. If I disable that under advanced settings, issue goes away. Enable it, and stuttering comes back. Reboot clears the issue temporarily, until it comes back(typically a program crash causes it to reoccur).

While digging a little deeper into nvidia, found some threads about dual monitors being the issue. I disabled my 2nd monitor and issue went way(desktop composition enabled). Not sure how the 2nd monitor is causing the issue.

 

[YaMoonSun]

Do a full scan with malwarebytes, customize the settings to include rootkits. Also, bring up the process manager and right click the process and open the file location. Where does it bring you? Check for latest gpu drivers as well, if problem persists after the scan.

 

[respoda]

Could you check event viewer and post any eventID's logged ?

With those we can try finding the right direction to search for a full fix.
Better than doing guess work

 

[Ranger4]

Brill. What monitors are you using & are they both the same. I have a dual monitor set up but they are both identical monitors & I don't have any problems like you do. I also use an NVIDIA gpu, but it is only a GT 610, as I don't play any games.

 

[respoda]

Could be, but I have 2 monitors, totally different from each other (one analog and one digital, one is 23" the other is 19"), and a TV screen (40" full HD) in a triple monitor setup, and never have issues.
Some event must have been logged on your system Brill, with that we don't need to guess, and most likely find a precedent with the correct fix.

It's like fixing a car...before starting to fix things randomly we need to know where the root cause lies

 

[respoda]

Brill. What monitors are you using & are they both the same. I have a dual monitor set up but they are both identical monitors & I don't have any problems like you do. I also use an NVIDIA gpu, but it is only a GT 610, as I don't play any games.

I use a GTS450, lol
Also no games. Still works perfectly

EDIT: that isn't true anymore. I changed it out recently with my brother's GT740 to support the TV...

 

[CharlesKnell]

You might find this article helpful:
What Is Desktop Window Manager (dwm.exe) and Why Is It Running?

 

[Brill]

Do a full scan with malwarebytes, customize the settings to include rootkits. Also, bring up the process manager and right click the process and open the file location. Where does it bring you? Check for latest gpu drivers as well, if problem persists after the scan.

Malwarebytes is clean. Path in process manager is C:\Windows\System32\dwm.exe. Video drivers are alreadyv up to date.

 

[Brill]

Could you check event viewer and post any eventID's logged ?

With those we can try finding the right direction to search for a full fix.
Better than doing guess work

The only relevant log I found was:
"The Desktop Window Manager has exited with code (0x40010004)" Event id 9009

 

[YaMoonSun]

According to this article, you're using IE, and IE is causing the error, and it recommends adding a 10 second delay if you insist upon using IE.

 

[respoda]

According to this article, you're using IE, and IE is causing the error, and it recommends adding a 10 second delay if you insist upon using IE.

You can try, but that is only related to Citrix server/client, which isn't the case here.

No, more likely is it is caused by a crash of explorer.exe, which is responsable for the Desktop.

First you need to update your drivers (I'm guessing Nvidia ?).
If already up to date, uninstall them COMPLETELY and reboot.
Then let the system run on the default M$ display driver.
I'm betting the issue is gone.

Try reinstalling the Nvidia drivers again.
If that still doesn't solve it, execute the following two procedures :


1) start>run>msconfig, in general tab choose 'Normal Startup'. This will load ALL M$ services upon next boot.
Reboot.

If the issue still exists, do :

2) start>run>msconfig, in the services tab, click 'Hide all M$ services, and then 'Disable all'.
That will disable all non-M$ services. Reboot.


One of these should yield something, maybe other useful info in the event log.


Other things you can do is disable trilinear something something in the 3D settings of your display driver control panel. (EDIT: 'trilinear optimization')


EDIT : do you by any means have a custom theme running ?
Did you use Uxtheme or have you patched your files with uxthemepatcher ?
Maybe explorer is customized as well ? Just a guess here...