Network usage causes high DPC Latency

[SpellStorm]

It's been a few days since I tried the solution and everything is in the green (literaly! )
I even tried running 3DMARK06 to see if it made any dent in my graphic performance and it didn't.

 

[Holy Moses]

It's been a few days since I tried the solution and everything is in the green (literaly! )
I even tried running 3DMARK06 to see if it made any dent in my graphic performance and it didn't.

My latency stays in the green until I open a bittorrent client then all hell breaks loose. I don't run a graphics card as I only a built in card. My problem is DEFINITELY related to my ethernet adapter. As soon as I disable it, all latency disappears.

I am convinced it is Windows 7 and the way it is interacting with various drivers is the issue.
It is the only common factor it seems in all these posts, and didn't seem to be a wide spread problem until recently, at least looking at various post dates on different forums since I started researching it.

 

[eross]

Powermizer switch does not work on a Desktop PC. It comes up with an error that no powermizer is found.
My PC is relatively new, but I don't remember if I had the problem from day one. I'm thinking that perhaps it appeared after some windows update. I will go over all the updates and check if anything has to do with NDIS.SYS.

 

[titule]

[...]
So I looked up and here is the same solution without any program to download just tweak some reg keys:


\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Video\{**a series of numbers that are different**}\0000\PerfLevelSrc

[...]



Step 4- Find "PowerMizerEnable" which is probably 5 ways down from "PerfLevelSrc". When you find it double click on PowerMizerEnable and change the value data from 1 to 0.


This will disable Powermizer

Thanks for that detailed instructions. Unfortunately, none of these keys exist in my registry. (I did search for keys, values and data, some classes where found but nothing you mentioned.

hope this works for you. But in any case, if nothing is going over 0.8ms or so in your case, this is a very good latency and its weird that you are still getting spikes in DPC latency checker. Do you?

Yes, the values I posted where good values with only a few spikes. DPC Latency is always higher then 16 milliseconds(!) when using the network.

I also should note that when I installed a fresh WIN7 (one of the first things I tried) before I installed ANYTHING else, the latency wasn't that bad - mostly yellow and only sometimes red, but after the sound drivers and especially the network and WLAN drivers were installed everything got crazy just like before.


Hope this helps I created an account & posted here just for this solution!

Thank you very much for that, this is very kind. If only more people would come back with solutions to the forums....

I never checked for DPC latency at the beginning (when I got that computer I did not even know that this thing exists.. those were nice times...)

It is clear for me now that DPC latency can have more than one cause and it is therefore not possible to find a one-for-all solution. I'm sure your solution will help some people with laptops and I hope someone will find a solution for me too.

 

[titule]

Still waiting for Intel support to solve this. In the mean time I found a way to restore normal DPC latency without rebooting: Go to Services and restart Base Filtering Engine. After this you need to restart Windows firewall from the Action Center in the systray .

I tried this and get a message that the name of the service is wrong. "net help start" also does not list "Base Filtering Engine" as a parameter.
Is this related to the windows firewall? I use the pctools firewall..

 

[eross]

Did you check to see if you have this service in the services list? (management console)
The Base Filtering Engine is related to the Windows firewall. If you don't have that service, try to restart your firewall service, and see if that resets the DPC latency.

 

[SpellStorm]

Powermizer switch does not work on a Desktop PC. It comes up with an error that no powermizer is found.
My PC is relatively new, but I don't remember if I had the problem from day one. I'm thinking that perhaps it appeared after some windows update. I will go over all the updates and check if anything has to do with NDIS.SYS.

yea it gives an error and asks if I'm sure and it might not work on older drivers or something I just clicked yes and everything is ok. but like I said, maybe there are different problems here. The only main thing connecting everything here is WIN7 .

by the way - I disabled all updates to windows as soon as I installed windows, and the spikes were there nonetheless. for me at least, I don't think it was an update issue.

 

[titule]

Did you check to see if you have this service in the services list? (management console)
The Base Filtering Engine is related to the Windows firewall. If you don't have that service, try to restart your firewall service, and see if that resets the DPC latency.

It doesn't.
Well... it does for some time. But after restarting the firewall, it is back in the reds again.

 

[titule]

by the way - I disabled all updates to windows as soon as I installed windows, and the spikes were there nonetheless. for me at least, I don't think it was an update issue.

Not a windows update issue. I think windows without any other software installed may work fine. But a soon as you install programs that actually USE the machine (like a fileshare program) you will get problems.
I don't have DPC lag when I don't surf. But that can't be the solution on a modern machine.. if I don't surf and only want to listen, I can use the ol' ghetto blaster.

 

[SpellStorm]

by the way - I disabled all updates to windows as soon as I installed windows, and the spikes were there nonetheless. for me at least, I don't think it was an update issue.

Not a windows update issue. I think windows without any other software installed may work fine. But a soon as you install programs that actually USE the machine (like a fileshare program) you will get problems.
I don't have DPC lag when I don't surf. But that can't be the solution on a modern machine.. if I don't surf and only want to listen, I can use the ol' ghetto blaster.

Yea I believe you are right. while the spikes were constant during network traffic, once I stopped all connections and disabled all LAN and WLAN adapters it all went to the greenish-yellow. but still, every 10-20 seconds I would get like 2 spikes in a row measuring above 20,000.

 

[Holy Moses]

By any chance are people in this thread using Threatfire or PC Tools products?


I shutdown Spyware Doctor w\ Anti-virus and now am able to download with uTorrent, browse and serve media, all at the same time (like I used to before recently) with no ill effects.
After reading a few threads over in that forum, it seems ThreatFire is causing issues.

It might not be specifically Spyware Doctor, as I immediately saw latency after installing and running Avast anti-virus.

Just thought I would bring this up as this is getting to be a real annoying issue.

 

[SpellStorm]

By any chance are people in this thread using Threatfire or PC Tools products?


I shutdown Spyware Doctor w\ Anti-virus and now am able to download with uTorrent, browse and serve media, all at the same time (like I used to before recently) with no ill effects.
After reading a few threads over in that forum, it seems ThreatFire is causing issues.

It might not be specifically Spyware Doctor, as I immediately saw latency after installing and running Avast anti-virus.

Just thought I would bring this up as this is getting to be a real annoying issue.

dont know what spyware doctor or threatfire is. never used them. As I said the problems existed (for me atleast) even before installing Avira AntiVir.

 

[eross]

Since restarting Base Filtering Engine service (Windows firewall & IPSEC) clears the problem temporarily, I suspect it's a problem with the NIC driver and Windows firewall.

 

[Holy Moses]

Well, my threory............ was just that.

Disabling my AV (threatfire and spyware doctor), merely delayed the inevitable it seems.
I woke up this morning and my PC was frozen. I had to hard reboot it.

If I leave P2P programs closed, I can go a few days without a reboot, though I generally shut the laptop down when I can.

The thing I don't get, is I have had the same setup on my Win 7 PC for over a year now, without ever having latency issues like this, using P2P or not.
Now, if I turn on uTorrent, I have to restart the PC every two hours or so, or it will lock up because of the latency.

I will try the Base Filtering Engine restart though....thanks for that.


EDIT: I get errors trying to restart the Base Filtering Engine. The process takes so long to even come up with an error that it is quicker for me to just reboot the PC.

 

[eross]

Have not had the problem for a couple of weeks now. Only thing that's changed are some Windows updates.

 

[titule]

It's gone?

I had the problem until yesterday, it even got worse until then.
Yesterday, I de-installed the firewall (PC-Tools) and replaced it with the COMODO firewall (before I tried the Microsoft Windows 7, Outpost, and ZoneAlarm, all of them I could not use for several reasons. I did not check the DPC latency with these firewalls).

My configuration now runs for almost 1 day and the latancy is always green. With the old config, I'd had it permanently above 16ms (meaning: a solid red plane).

I will post again when the red spikes come back...

 

[titule]

Now running for 5 days, bittorent and all .. except red spike. No more DPC latency since I use the other firewall.

Bye bye

 

[Holy Moses]

Have not had the problem for a couple of weeks now. Only thing that's changed are some Windows updates.

Same here. All latency has disappeared. Only thing I changed recently was Windows updates and getting "readyboost" to work. Using 8GB cache on my laptop. Pretty sure it was the updates though.

Didn't change a damn thing other than those two things, in fact I have barely been home and every night my RSS downloader does it's thing, and I have had my PC running for about a week, seeding all torrents to proper ratio.

Kinda shocked but happy at the same time.

 

[movb]

The same thing for me. I noticed today I haven't rebooted a long time, look at uptime - 5 days! And torrent and IPTV don't freeze my system. But I haven't deleted any system software (I run Kaspersky Internet Security). The last updates for windows were 16.12.2010 and it's described as security fixes.

 

[cutcopypaste]

wow i've been dealing with this for about 6 months as well! ever since I gota whole new top of the line awesome computer. and it ended up being ever so frustrating.
i am currently installing the newest windows update which i'd put off and my fingers are crossed!