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One of the reasons I purchased a new computer a couple of weeks ago was that I couldnt figure out, on my previous PC, what was causing a short, random freeze, associated to a CPU spike, every now and then - it was doing it for about a month. I had this PC for 10 years, so I thought it was time for a change anyway.

But now, my brand new XPS is doing the exact same thing!

This is driving me nuts... I kept the keyboard, the mouse and the speakers, router is the same obviously, and power plug. Could any of these be causing this issue?

I am doing a lot of remote desktop as well.

UPDATE

Process Monitor seems to indicate AUDIODG.EXE might be the culprit. Not sure, not sure how either, nor why, and even less how to fix it.

UPDATE 2

Actually, it might be my WiFi/router. I turned it off 30 minutes ago, no glitch nor freeze since then. Weird. Strange. Odd.

UPDATE 3

Keyboard, mouse speakers and router are all exonerated. I caught the infamous CPU spike in the resource monitor:

enter image description here

UPDATE 4

LatencyMon analysis

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CONCLUSION

Your system appears to be having trouble handling real-time audio and other tasks. You are likely to experience buffer underruns appearing as drop outs, clicks or pops. One or more DPC routines that belong to a driver running in your system appear to be executing for too long. At least one detected problem appears to be network related. In case you are using a WLAN adapter, try disabling it to get better results. One problem may be related to power management, disable CPU throttling settings in Control Panel and BIOS setup. Check for BIOS updates. LatencyMon has been analyzing your system for 0:09:45 (h:mm:ss) on all processors.

SYSTEM INFORMATION

Computer name: DESKTOP-UHHIAU6 OS version: Windows 10, 10.0, version 2009, build: 19042 (x64) Hardware: XPS 8940, Dell Inc. CPU: GenuineIntel Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-10700 CPU @ 2.90GHz Logical processors: 16 Processor groups: 1 RAM: 16118 MB total

CPU SPEED

Reported CPU speed: 2904 MHz

Note: reported execution times may be calculated based on a fixed reported CPU speed. Disable variable speed settings like Intel Speed Step and AMD Cool N Quiet in the BIOS setup for more accurate results.

MEASURED INTERRUPT TO USER PROCESS LATENCIES

The interrupt to process latency reflects the measured interval that a usermode process needed to respond to a hardware request from the moment the interrupt service routine started execution. This includes the scheduling and execution of a DPC routine, the signaling of an event and the waking up of a usermode thread from an idle wait state in response to that event.

Highest measured interrupt to process latency (µs): 120397.80 Average measured interrupt to process latency (µs): 11.580995

Highest measured interrupt to DPC latency (µs): 120341.80 Average measured interrupt to DPC latency (µs): 7.935360

REPORTED ISRs

Interrupt service routines are routines installed by the OS and device drivers that execute in response to a hardware interrupt signal.

Highest ISR routine execution time (µs): 276.950758 Driver with highest ISR routine execution time: HDAudBus.sys - High Definition Audio Bus Driver, Microsoft Corporation

Highest reported total ISR routine time (%): 0.007763 Driver with highest ISR total time: HDAudBus.sys - High Definition Audio Bus Driver, Microsoft Corporation

Total time spent in ISRs (%) 0.008009

ISR count (execution time <250 µs): 59032 ISR count (execution time 250-500 µs): 0 ISR count (execution time 500-1000 µs): 3 ISR count (execution time 1000-2000 µs): 0 ISR count (execution time 2000-4000 µs): 0 ISR count (execution time >=4000 µs): 0

REPORTED DPCs

DPC routines are part of the interrupt servicing dispatch mechanism and disable the possibility for a process to utilize the CPU while it is interrupted until the DPC has finished execution.

Highest DPC routine execution time (µs): 62842.406336 Driver with highest DPC routine execution time: ndis.sys - Network Driver Interface Specification (NDIS), Microsoft Corporation

Highest reported total DPC routine time (%): 0.010936 Driver with highest DPC total execution time: nvlddmkm.sys - NVIDIA Windows Kernel Mode Driver, Version 457.09 , NVIDIA Corporation

Total time spent in DPCs (%) 0.029114

DPC count (execution time <250 µs): 323046 DPC count (execution time 250-500 µs): 0 DPC count (execution time 500-10000 µs): 149 DPC count (execution time 1000-2000 µs): 2 DPC count (execution time 2000-4000 µs): 1 DPC count (execution time >=4000 µs): 5

REPORTED HARD PAGEFAULTS

Hard pagefaults are events that get triggered by making use of virtual memory that is not resident in RAM but backed by a memory mapped file on disk. The process of resolving the hard pagefault requires reading in the memory from disk while the process is interrupted and blocked from execution.

NOTE: some processes were hit by hard pagefaults. If these were programs producing audio, they are likely to interrupt the audio stream resulting in dropouts, clicks and pops. Check the Processes tab to see which programs were hit.

Process with highest pagefault count: backgroundtaskhost.exe

Total number of hard pagefaults 1977 Hard pagefault count of hardest hit process: 892 Number of processes hit: 41

PER CPU DATA

CPU 0 Interrupt cycle time (s): 13.773596 CPU 0 ISR highest execution time (µs): 276.950758 CPU 0 ISR total execution time (s): 0.750213 CPU 0 ISR count: 58933 CPU 0 DPC highest execution time (µs): 62842.406336 CPU 0 DPC total execution time (s): 2.469792 CPU 0 DPC count: 285568

What I tried according to this report: disable network card power management, install the oldest nvidia driver I could find. To no avail.

CTZStef
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2 Answers2

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If the same problem is occurring across multiple computers, you have to look at what is shared between them.

A common culprit is network/internet. A computer will freeze briefly if it is trying to reach a given target and that target is not replying in an expected manner.

Put the computers on a different network and observe if they behave the same way or not. If the issue goes away, it's probably the network hardware (wifi router and/or modem) that is the cause. If the problem doesn't go away, it could be software you have installed on both systems that is polling for some network service that is not responding as expected.

music2myear
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  • A test I did yesterday was to turn off the router wifi, the PC ethernet still being connected to it. It is maybe too early to tell, but I haven't experienced one single freeze all the time Wifi was off. As soon as I turned it back on (my kids were complaining hehe), freezes came back... – CTZStef Feb 20 '21 at 15:46
  • Something that's been bugging me, I cannot find a good tool to catch processes responsible for CPU spikes... it must not be that hard?? – CTZStef Feb 20 '21 at 15:52
  • You'll want to use a tool that tracks CPU usage and maximums and minimums per process correlated to time. This will allow you to see the process involved in the spike. I'd guess these exist, but I don't know of any off the top of my head. – music2myear Feb 20 '21 at 16:55
  • I added an image above, you can see that huge CPU spike... – CTZStef Feb 23 '21 at 20:04
  • That doesn't tell us much of anything. You need to be able to indicate which specific process or processes are the cause of the spike. We don't disbelieve you about the spike, we just cannot tell you what is causing the spike, and we cannot get any better advice unless and until you track the specific process better than the guess you've got in your question. – music2myear Feb 23 '21 at 23:42
  • You're right. See update 4 above. Thx! – CTZStef Feb 24 '21 at 11:02
  • Cool. That should, theoretically, be an easy enough fix. Good job pursuing the issue and finding the right tool to get you the right information. – music2myear Feb 24 '21 at 15:50
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I too have an NVIDIA graphical card and I've been having random freezes also on my computer for many months. As the freezes involved also the screen, I investigated whether the problem was the NVIDIA graphical driver.

As NVIDIA driver updates didn't help across several months, I decided to go backwards.

I finally arrived to driver version 451.67, where the freezes have disappeared. My theory is that the driver tries unsuccessfully to "phone home" to NVIDIA, freezing the computer in the meantime. I haven't dared upgrade the driver since then.

You might also try downgrading to version 451.67, which can simply be installed over the existing driver. Automatic updates must be disabled in the NVIDIA Control Panel.

If Windows Updates will ever install a new driver (didn't happen to me), see this answer.

harrymc
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  • I added an image above, you can see that huge CPU spike... – CTZStef Feb 23 '21 at 20:04
  • It says that that driver is not compatible with my version of Windows. I guess I will have to backtrack the way you did... – CTZStef Feb 23 '21 at 20:38
  • I can see the Razer Lighting Engine Helper processor at the top of your CPU. Some advice I have found: Try stopping Synapse (if installed) or uninstall and reinstall the latest version, deactivate the "Ambience detection" effect, or see [this post](https://www.reddit.com/r/razer/comments/b2p6er/razer_lighting_engine_helper_is_taking_a_lot_of/). – harrymc Feb 23 '21 at 20:49
  • Wouldnt that be consistently high CPU consumption - i.e., more or less constant in time? It is 100% CPU spikes for a short time that I am experiencing. – CTZStef Feb 23 '21 at 20:56
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    I don't know if my answer does relate to your problem, so I would like also to explore other avenues. – harrymc Feb 23 '21 at 20:59
  • It's crazy. There is so many possibilities. At one point I thought it was my router WiFi, but it was just an addon that the spikes didnt occur while it was off... – CTZStef Feb 23 '21 at 21:02
  • Dell customer support just told me to turn my computer off and on again... no kidding. – CTZStef Feb 23 '21 at 21:03
  • Is it possible to test if it's happening while booting in Safe mode (or Safe mode with Network)? – harrymc Feb 23 '21 at 21:08
  • Will try. About Razer, I tried another keyboard before, the glitch was still happening (although Razer might still have been running at the time, it may not have been able to do much damage). – CTZStef Feb 23 '21 at 21:13
  • I could probably make up a plausible scenario where "Ambience detection" could cause intermittent issues. re a comment to one of the other answers, Process Explorer (Microsoft sysinternals free) does have per-thread cpu monitoring, at least via a right-click thread > properties dialog. So you might start with the most likely culprits and look for the spike to materialize. harrymc is onto something with the "helper apps" for keyboards (I call them rear foglight wiper, five moisture strip applications). really anything like this, remove it if you can until you find the issue and then decide – Yorik Feb 23 '21 at 21:35
  • Well, then again, I had the CPU spikes even with keyboard unplugged. Please have a look at update 4 above for new details. – CTZStef Feb 24 '21 at 11:03
  • I never said keyboard. Will look later. – harrymc Feb 24 '21 at 11:04
  • Ambient detection was off, no keyboard: CPU spikes still there. You think Razer software alone could still cause them? Sounds unlikely to me but I am ready to try anything at this point... – CTZStef Feb 24 '21 at 11:29
  • Try still booting in Safe mode (or Safe mode with Network) to see if it's caused by some installed third-party software. – harrymc Feb 24 '21 at 14:44