[SOLVED] [W10StdV1703b15063 x64] DPC Audio Popping. FIX: DISABLE VERIFIER.

[GJC]

Hello,

For the past roughly five days or so, I've been experiencing horrendous audio quality when using USB headsets, which I can only describe as the sounds seeming to stutter, pop, and crackle. The issue seems to be particular to my PC and not the headsets, as they work fine on other PCs but experience trouble regardless of which port I use on mine. I have a pair of speakers which work fine, and plugging in devices via the audio in/out jacks also work without issue. I've exhausted a long list of potential fixes trying to solve this issue, and though I'm not 100% certain this is the culprit, my PC has been having issues with DPC latency, which may even be causing me performance issues abroad. According to LatencyMon, the problem processes are ndis.sys, and storport.sys.

I've generated a trace file using xperf that I hope someone will be able to use to help troubleshoot the issue: trace.etl - Google Drive

Thanks in advance for any help that anyone is able to provide.

 

[xilolee]

Re: Audio Popping Caused by DPC Latency - storport.sys and ndis.sys

Hi GJC. :welcome:

I'm not totally sure about your motherboard: is it asus PRIME H270-PRO ?
If yes, there's a new bios for it (and for your cpu i5-7500).
Current bios seems to be version 0607, new bios is version 0808 2017/07/21.
Read carefully your manual before updating the bios.
Remember the precautions: system restore point, backup of your important files, system image, windows cd at hand...
Where did you seat your SSD? In M.2_1 or in M.2_2 or where?
Are you using SATA6G_1 OR SATA6G_6 connectors?

 

[GJC]

Re: Audio Popping Caused by DPC Latency - storport.sys and ndis.sys

Hi xilolee,

Thanks for the response. My motherboard is indeed the Asus H720. I've found the BIOS update but I'm a bit hesitant to try and apply it at the moment, given that I've never messed with BIOS settings before. I also tracked down the update for my CPU that you mentioned but it appears just to be an Intel Graphics Driver. Would that one still be worth installing?

To answer your other questions, my SSD appears to be seated in M.2_1, and I believe I am using 6G_1 connectors if the labels on them are correct.

Before I try to proceed with the BIOS update, can I ask if there are any other less risky measures I can take to address the problem? Or does the trace file point to some sort of conflict between the BIOS and SSD?

Thanks again for your help.

 

[xilolee]

Re: Audio Popping Caused by DPC Latency - storport.sys and ndis.sys

Try to move your sata connector from SATA6G_1 to SATA6G_2 (or 3, 4, 5, I'd avoid 6).
I only checked your CPU and motherboard webpages.
There is a known problem with Kaby Lake and Skylake CPUs, solvable with a BIOS update, when it is available.
Yours is available.

 

[GJC]

Re: Audio Popping Caused by DPC Latency - storport.sys and ndis.sys

Hi again.

I got around to creating a system image and backing it up to an external hard disk drive, but when I tried to eject the USB I got a BSOD with an error message along the lines of "VERIFIER_IOMANAGER_VIOLATION" or something similar. Diagnosing that pointed to Driver Verifier, which I had enabled in response to another error I was receiving prior to my audio popping. I recalled that someone else had proposed disabling this as a solution to the audio popping, so when I successfully did so, I tested out my headset and found the issue had vanished.

For the moment my problem seems to be rectified, but if it crops again for any reason I'll be sure to return to this forum.

Thanks for taking the time to look into my case. You can mark this one as solved.

 

[xilolee]

Re: [W10StdV1703b15063 x64] Audio Popping Caused by DPC Latency. Storport.sys & ndis.

Good! :thumbsup2:

But how long did you enable verifier for?

 

[GJC]

Re: [W10StdV1703b15063 x64] Audio Popping Caused by DPC Latency. Storport.sys & ndis.

I had enabled it this past week. It was in response to another BSOD error I was getting called "KERNEL_SECURITY_CHECK_FAILURE". Disabling it seemed to make sense as a fix as I only recall having the audio popping issue the same day as I enabled driver verifier.

 

[xilolee]

Re: [W10StdV1703b15063 x64] Audio Popping Caused by DPC Lat. CULPRIT: VERIFIER ENABLE

Indeed.
At least now you know your BSOD wasn't caused by a faulty driver. :w2: