[SOLVED] Windows 10 slows to a crawl when I'm trying to download. The problem gets exponentially worse the longer the system is running.

[AlucardSX]

The problem seems to be connected to interrupts caused by ndis.sys, with DPC routine execution times allready starting out at a point where LatencyMon is telling me I might be having trouble handling real-time audio and other tasks, but nothing really noticeable during my daily usage (e.g. listening to podcasts, surfing the web, Office, gaming). However, the longer the system is running the worse the problem gets, starting with audio cracks and ending with the system becoming so unresponsive that it can take half a minute to register a mouse click. It doesn't seem to matter which download program I use, be it Chrome, Steam, Epic Launcher, battle.net launcher, GOG, etc. Maybe Xbox App/Windows Store could be considered be a bit better and qbittorrent a bit worse than the rest. It doesn't seem to matter which drive the download program is installed to, nor which drive it is downloading to.
I've had this problem for a long time, going to many different hardware iterations, from CPU, to motherboard, to RAM, to migrating my system partition to a SSD. I've tried to fix it on and off with little success, not least because, as you might imagine, trying to test fixes for a problem that doesn't immediately present itself after boot is kind of a nightmare.

Some fixes I've tried so far, in no particular order:

Unplugged all my HDDs and ran my system with my SSDs only.​

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Flashed the latest BIOS on my Asrock Z590 Extreme motherboard, then resetting it to default (which boiled down to resetting my DRAM settings from Gear 2 to auto)​

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Updated the drivers for both ethernet ports on my motherboard (Intel® Ethernet Connection (14) I219v and Realtek PCIe 2.5 GbE Familiy Controller) then tested using either one while​

disabling both the other one as well as all other Network adapters listed in device manager.​

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Disabled the WAN Module (Wifi+Bluetooth) in UEFI​

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Tried to switch from selective startup to normal startup in msconfig, which only caused Windows to throw a 0xc00000e error on boot, which I could only resolve using some half understood command line voodoo. If you hadn't guessed by now, I'm not exactly Kevin Mitnick >_>​

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Ran sfc /scannow in an elevated command prompt​

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Ran DISM.exe /Online /Cleanup-Image /RestoreHealth in elevated PowerShell​

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Ran /set useplatformclock false in an elevated command prompt​

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Switched the Interrupt Moderation Rate of my ethernet adapters from adaptive to extreme​

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Tested my Ram using MemTest86​

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Here's a screenshot of LatencyMon after around 7 hours of system runtime, while not actively downloading:


Here's a screenshot after the same 7 hours, but while downloading:


Here's my Speccy snapshot: http://speccy.piriform.com/results/g0BvGXRqGKMqVibxauibmDA

Here's a link to Sysnative BSOD collection files (collected during a download, not sure if that matters): Google Drive: Sign-in

Here's a link to a trace.etl file (also collected during a download): Google Drive: Sign-in

Any ideas as to what the hell is going on would be very much appreciated.

 

[Corday]

You mentioned updating Ethernet and WiFi drivers, but which mode are you using?

 

[AlucardSX]

Oh I updated the drivers for my two wired ethernet ports (which I have both tested, though I'm currently connected to the Intel Port). I never use WiFi on desktop, and my Asrock Z590 Extreme doesn't support it in any case. It's just that a toggle for a WAN module is still present in UEFI, so I set it to off just in case.

 

[Corday]

Did that solve the problem?

 

[AlucardSX]

No, unfortunately not.

 

[Corday]

Run this test when download is both good and bad: Speedtest by Ookla - The Global Broadband Speed Test If there's a large difference the problem is with your ISP.

 

[AlucardSX]

Ok, so I did the speedtest after 14+ hours system runtime, at a time when ndis.sys DPC total execution time during downloads was well over 100,000 µs (I obviously didn't download during the speedtest). The result was a download speed of around 260 Mbps and an upload speed of around 50 Mbps, which is about what my internet should be able to handle. I then did another speed test right after restarting Windows, at a time when ndis.sys DPC total execution time during downloads was around 2500 µs, and both upload and download speeds remained around the same as they had been during the previous. To be honest though, anything else would have surprised me. The problem was never that my downloads are slow, it's that my system gets extremely slow to the point of unresponsiveness during downloads. And it's not like I ever had any troubles with downloading through my Playstation 5, or my android phone or tablet.

 

[Corday]

Since your RAM tested OK, try setting your Page File to 3 times your GBs of RAM. If no good, revert to preset. Also please list all your specs since you've done substantial modifications.

 

[AlucardSX]

Ok, I'll set the pagefile to minimum and maximum 128000 MB. I'll have to wait a couple of hours to see if it makes a difference. I'll get back to you.

As for specs:
CPU: Intel Core i5-11400F (no overclocking or anything)
GPU: Geforce RTX 4070 ti, 12 GB VRAM (weirdly enough, speccy shows VRAM as 4089 MB, but both dxdiag and CPU-Z assure me that's it 12 GB. Plus some of the high-end games I've played on this thing would probably blow up my PC if they'd be forced to make do with 4 GB of VRAM)
Motherboard: Asrock Z590 Extreme
RAM: Corsair Vengeance LPX 2x16 GB DDR4 3600MHz C18
SSD:

1863GB Western Digital WDC WDS200T2B0C-00PXH0 (system partition)​

1863GB Crucial CT2000P2SSD8​

HDD:
4657GB TOSHIBA HDWE150
1863GB Western Digital WDC WD2002FAEX-007BA
3726GB Western Digital WDC WD40EZRX-00SPEB0
3726GB Western Digital WDC WD40EFRX-68N32N0

Let me know if I've forgotten anything. The speccy snapshot should also hopefully list everything relevant.

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[Corday]

PSU?

 

[AlucardSX]

MSI MPG A850G PCIE5 850W ATX 3.0

 

[AlucardSX]

Unfortunately, manually enlargening the pagefile didn't solve the issue. I set it back to automatic management.

 

[Corday]

Try changing the Power Profile to High Performance.

 

[AlucardSX]

Unfortunately that doesn't make a difference either.

 

[Corday]

I tried looking at your info in Google Drive and was denied access.

 

[AlucardSX]

Damn, sorry. Should hopefully work now.

 

[Corday]

It took hours for your OK. I'll get to it, but no time now. Maybe someone else can take a look.

 

[AlucardSX]

No worries. Sorry again I'm European, so I was asleep and didn't notice that I hadn't given the necessary permissions.

 

[Corday]

Can't zero in. Too much info in Event Viewer.. Let's try this. The next time it (slow down) happens, go to Event Viewer and check immediately for what the problem might be.

 

[AlucardSX]

Ok, I downloaded using Epic Games Store for approximately 1 minute, slowing Windows considerably (DPC execution time in excess of 100,000 µs)
The only administrative events during that time were warnings with the ID 10016, stemming from DistributedCOM:

The Anwendungsspezifisch permission settings do not grant Lokal Aktivierung permission for the COM Server application with CLSID​

{37399C92-DC3F-4B55-AE5B-811EE82398AD}​

and APPID​

{37399C92-DC3F-4B55-AE5B-811EE82398AD}​

to the user DESKTOP-4F0VDIR\aluca SID (S-1-5-21-3615177999-3261653453-3779512466-1001) from address LocalHost (unter Verwendung von LRPC) running in the application container Microsoft.GamingApp_2309.1001.3.0_x64__8wekyb3d8bbwe SID (S-1-15-2-1723189366-2159580849-2248400763-1481059666-1951766778-2756563051-3565589001). This security permission can be modified using the Component Services administrative tool.​

They repeat pretty much like clockwork every 10 seconds, whether I'm downloading or not. According to this Microsoft article, these events are apparently expected and by design, and can safely be ignored.

Other than that, apart from a bunch of audit successes under "Windows Logs-->Security" (which happen every five minutes), the only other event that seems to have happened during that time span was a warning with id 8002 in "Microsoft-->Windows-->Store":

Trying to remove timer {43737979-C652-27CF-E331-7A1E702D612F} not in table​

Function: MemoryTimerService::CancelTimerWithId​

Source: onecoreuap\enduser\winstore\licensemanager\lib\memorytimer.cpp (80)"​

Plus a bunch of accompanying information and verbose level events also under "Microsoft-->Windows-->Store". Let me know if you think it might mean anything and I'll post them, but since the 8002 event seems to happen semi-regularly (a couple of times per hour), whether or not I'm actively downloading anything (though there might of course be some small Windows background traffic), I'm not sure if it isn't just a coincidence that it also happened while I downloaded.

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