Audio dropouts/pops and DPC Latency W10 Home

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fastfingers

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Sep 2, 2019
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14
Hi there, I'm on Dell's XPS15 9570 and have been plagued with DPC latency issues for almost a year now and just chanced upon this forum today. I bought this laptop mainly for music production and live performance - using Digital Audio Workstations (DAW) like Ableton Live. Hope to get some help on this.

My answers for the list of questions are in bold below:
  • System Manufacturer? Microsoft Intel (not sure if this is what you're referring to)
  • Laptop or Desktop? Laptop
  • Exact model number (if laptop, check label on bottom) XPS15 9570
  • OS ? (Windows 10, 8.1, 8, 7, Vista) W10 Home
  • x86 (32bit) or x64 (64bit)? x64
  • Service pack?
  • What was original installed OS on system? W10 Home
  • Is the OS an OEM version (came pre-installed on system) or full retail version (YOU purchased it from retailer)? came pre-installed.
  • Age of system? (hardware) 1 year old. Bought in Sept 2018.
  • Age of OS installation? 31/8/2019 - Updated to Version 1903 a few days back but had this problem for a long time.
  • Have you re-installed the OS? Nope.
  • CPU Intel Core i7-8750H
  • RAM (brand, EXACT model, what slots are you using?) 16.0GB, not sure brand of RAM.
  • Video Card Intel UHD Graphics 630, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050Ti with Max-Q Design
  • Is driver verifier enabled or disabled? Not sure what this is.
  • What security software are you using? (Firewall, antivirus, antimalware, antispyware, and so forth) Windows defender, McAfee LiveSafe
  • Are you using proxy, vpn, ipfilters or similar software? No.
  • Are you using Disk Image tools? (like daemon tools, alcohol 52% or 120%, virtual CloneDrive, roxio software) Nope.
  • Are you currently under/overclocking? Are there overclocking software installed on your system? Nope. But I did undervolt my laptop.

MSinfo32 and dxdiag information attached.

Snapshot from LatencyMon:
1567409513323.png
There are 4 main drivers that cause problems for me for DPC latency - NDIS.sys, ACPI.sys, dxgkrnl.sys and WDf01000.sys.

Thank you!!
 

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Hi fastfingers - welcome to Sysnative :)

Are you experiencing symptoms of high ISR/DPC latency such as audio glitches or skipped video frames? LatencyMon has its uses but it hasn't really kept up with how ISRs and DPCs are processed on Windows 10 and can give the impression of a problem when there really isn't one. If you are having such glitches, please uninstall LatencyMon while we're troubleshooting. It simulates media playback in the background which adds its own amount of ISR/DPC latency and unnecessarily complicates analysis in Windows Performance Toolkit.

The version of Windows 10 you're using comes with a somewhat less functional version of Windows Performance Recorder built-in but it should do the job of getting a relevant trace. You'll need to open an elevated command prompt and run the command:
Code: 
wpr -start GeneralProfile
That should start the trace. Leave the elevated command prompt window open and do what's needed to cause the audio glitches. When you've recreated the problem switch back to the command prompt window and execute the command (change the path to whatever is appropriate for your system):
Code: 
wpr -stop D:\trace01.etl
It may take a minute or more but eventually it should finish and create the file in the path entered in the command. The trace may be fairly large but they compress quite nicely so please zip the trace, upload the zip to a cloud drive or file sharing service, and then provide a download link to the zip so we can have a look. Let me now if you have any problems/questions.
 
Hi cwsink, thank you for the welcome and the response :)

Yes, I am experiencing symptoms:
1) audio drop-outs (an audible pop, followed by a full second of complete silence), before the audio comes back when I'm using Ableton Live.
2) Sometimes when I move my mouse (plugged into the laptop), the screen "freezes" for a few seconds before responding to my movement.
3) Sometimes when I type on an external keyboard (also plugged into the laptop), the screen "freezes" and the last keystrokeeeeeeee (like this) would repeat it self multiple times.

I will run the trace later on today and post the results here.
 
The ISR/DPC processing is actually really good until a spike occurs towards the end of the trace. The first thing that happened at that point as far as ISRs and DPCs are concerned is a very long running (25 ms) ISR from dxgkrnl.sys. That driver is usually doing work on behalf of a GPU driver. Oddly, I'm not seeing an Nvidia GPU in the trace configuration properties although I do see nvlddmkm.sys in the trace which is a Nvidia driver. I'm wondering if the Nvidia GPU went AWOL during the trace. Can you check to see if there's a folder named C:\Windows\LiveKernelReports and if so, see if there are any .dmp files in it or its subdirectories?
 
Hmmm there are .dmp files, but none of them were created yesterday when I was performing the trace:

1567572662415.png

All the folders have .dmp files in them
 
I'm uncertain as to why your Nvidia GPU isn't showing up in the trace configuration properties. Are you using the latest Nvidia drivers made available by Dell for your computer? The hardware in laptops can have modifications which make it important to use drivers specifically for the device.

Please zip up the dump files and make them available for download as they might be useful. Also, please follow steps 1 and 2 here and make the zip it generates available. It will collect event logs which might help us figure out what's happening.
 
Just checked the drivers and yes they are updated...
1567613854693.png

And also the link to the kernel reports: LiveKernelReports.zip
Though the file is already quite big, there are quite a few of the .dmp files that I did not manage to zip in there because I did not have permissions to them.
 
The Windows directory and all its subdirectories are protected so you'd need to first copy (not move) the LiveKernelReports folder to your Desktop. The copy will not have those protections and should allow you to do whatever you want with the files. It looks like you got quite a few files anyway so I'll have a look at what's there.

I'm not referring to what comes through Geforce but rather the Dell support page for your device. The latest from Dell looks to be 431.23 and might include tweaks specific to the device. Generic Nvidia drivers aren't necessarily what you should be using, is what I'm saying.
 
Dells usually come with a tool that allows you to check for updates over the Internet. Have you already used it to check for and apply any and all updates it makes available? It's often the case you'd need to run it multiple times after an install/reboot until there are no more updates offered by the tool. It looks like they might be calling it "Dell Update" these days going by the support page for your device.
 
There seem to have been a significant number of live kernel dumps created over the past year or so and the subsystems involved seem to be quite varied. The most recent LKD was created on 7 Aug 2019 so hopefully some updates have stopped those issues.

I'm not sure if the long running ISRs/DPCs are a symptom or the cause of the problems you're experiencing. USBXHCI.SYS and dxgkrnl.sys seem to be the worst offenders. It seems like dxgkrnl.sys begins the spike for 2 of the traces while the other seems to have been started by USBXHCI.SYS. As mentioned, though, they could be the victims rather than the culprits.

I'd certainly try the Dell supplied GPU drivers to see if that makes a difference. If it does not I'd then turn my attention to the USB devices.

Please do make another trace available if the problems continue.
 
Are you on the latest BIOS? If I recall correctly, Dell released a BIOS update a few months ago to improve DPC latency on this model.
 
Yes, I am on the latest BIOS. The update helped reduce the DPC latency (based on values that I had on latencyMon previously) - it did not resolve the problem entirely.
 
Can you describe the spike from your point of view during the latest trace? Does the unresponsive keyboard only happen while typing in certain programs? Are you able to move the mouse cursor while it's happening? Do you also have audio glitches during the keyboard problem? A user interface can become unresponsive if the CPU on which its thread is running becomes too busy to process the input in a timely manner but it can also happen if the thread is idle waiting on something to finish before continuing to process user input. The latest trace shows nothing to suggest the system was too busy which makes me think it might be waiting on something when the keyboard problem happens.

Something I see about your system which makes me a little nervous is that it has a Killer Networking adapter and your non-paged pool usage seems quite high. The Killer Performance Suite has been problematic in the past; the main reason being it consumed non-paged pool memory until the system ran out of memory which would cause poor performance and crashes. Do you have that program listed in "Apps & feautres"?

Also, although there is no evidence that it's causing a problem, I think it might be a good idea to completely uninstall the McAfee security application(s) and just use Windows Defender - at least while we're troubleshooting. It has caused problems in the past which are difficult to spot and the number of drivers it installs on a system is disturbing. It seems to inject itself into quite a few subsystems.
 
Hi, sorry for the late reply, have been quite busy the past week. For the last trace, I'm afraid I don't have much other detail - I was not playing any music or audio then so I can't verify if there were audio spikes at that point. It was half a second of latency, so I also did not manage to try moving my mouse to determine if it was frozen as well.

And yes, I Do have Killer Performance Suite showing up in Apps & Features.

I will continue to do traces and upload it here when I observe the freezing happening, if it helps!
 
It looks like an update for the Killer components came out very recently and it's marked as urgent on the support page for your device. If you haven't already done so in the last 24 hours please run the Dell update utility and install the update if it's offered.

I'd need to know if the keyboard hang is also causing audio/video glitches to get a sense of where to look. If it does and you can catch it in a trace, please do.

Have you uninstalled McAfee?
 

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