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Excessive CPU usage

Posted: Wed Oct 04, 2017 3:05 pm
by hfsdpk11
Hello all, I've recently run into a problem on a HP Elitebook 8440 laptop where trying to run SDRUno is essentially useless because of all CPUs pegging to 100%. The culprit appears to be the Windows audiodg.exe service hogging the CPUs and it's also affecting other audio processing applications installed on that platform. The reason I'm posting this here is that it seems this problem was triggered by installing SDRUno. Everything worked fine until then, now the laptop is close to being a brick. Uninstalling SDRUno, MIRICSTv and their related registry keys does not solve the problem and I'm left with a laptop that no longer smoothly runs my other audio processing apps. A week's worth of research on the web has not revealed a cure - I've done the "disable audio enhancements" thing, checked all drivers and fully updated Windows KB's to no avail.

The offending laptop is an HP Elitebook 8440, Intel Corei5/2.4GHz, 4GB, Win7pro64bit and is the platform I want to permanently run my SDR. I have SDRUno/RSP2pro running smoothly on a Dell 6320 laptop which is i5/2.5G/4GB, Win7pro64bit, granted that it has a different suite of programs installed vs. the HP, but the performance (and behaviour of audiodg.exe) is astonishingly better than the HP. SDRU running on the Dell easily supports 2 VRX @ 2 MHz. SR, loafing along at 15-20% CPU SDR and peaking 30% CPU Sys, whereas the HP with 1 VRX @ 2 MHz. SR constantly runs an average 45% CPU SDR and chokes to 100% CPU Sys.

Help would be appreciated.

Hugo.
VE3KTN

Re: Excessive CPU usage

Posted: Tue Oct 10, 2017 2:43 am
by F1BJB
I had this problem with windows 7 and many audio/video related software's.
It is not related to SDRuno
I tried a lot of tips from various sources with no effect.
It seems that the problem mysteriously vanished and I don't know if it was
due to an update from Microsoft or the installation of a software
that made useful modifications.
Sorry to be of so little help.

Re: Excessive CPU usage

Posted: Sun Oct 15, 2017 9:34 pm
by hfsdpk11
Thanks for your reply. Since posting this, I've uninstalled SDRU from the hp, at least temporarily, and have been paring back other less used programs to try isolating the offending application but so far no success. I'm close to the point of completely rebuilding the PC from scratch. Virus scans and malware scans have revealed nothing bad.

Your comment of a similar situation having a PC suddenly "coming good" on its own is familiar in that this same PC had, at one time, stopped retaining application windows size/position across a power-down reboot. That remained the case for several months until it suddenly regained that capability, all the while its never having been on the internet nor any changes in installed programs. Also, for about 6 months now, this W7 refuses to remember the position of desktop icons and I have to resort to a 3rd party shell app to do an icon restore. All this seems to be pointing to something corrupt or missing from my W7 install which, as I said, is leading me to consider a complete system rebuild. It's something I'm loathe to do but, as has been said, needs must as the devil drives.

Re: Excessive CPU usage

Posted: Mon Oct 16, 2017 8:28 am
by g1hbe
A couple of years ago my Win7 laptop started doing this. It would start up fine but within a few moments everything was running slowly and it was also running hot. To cut a very long story short, it turned out to be a well-known W7 bug which caused the PC to constantly search for updates. The cure was to disable a certain file. Sadly I can't recall which one, but the info is out there on the net.

Re: Excessive CPU usage

Posted: Sun Nov 19, 2017 2:17 pm
by hfsdpk11
To update on this thread, the offending HP laptop has miraculously and of its own accord, "come good". Same kind of situation as in F1BJB's reply. I've not done anything that I can put my finger on except that the Win7 has been updated a couple of times with the most recent KB security and .NET updates published by MS. I've reloaded SDRUno (now V1.21) and it's working acceptably well with sampling rate up to the max of 10 MHz. and 2 VRX. There is still the occasional CPU choke due to audiodg.exe and also dwm.exe, but they are few and far between enough to be tolerable.

I hate it when things come good on their own because I won't be able to fix it when (not if) it happens again in the future.

ve3ktn
Hugo.