Small micro-second spike/stutter every second, regardless of activity

[13ilbo]

Hi,

I have an UX303LB Asus Zenbook.

Regardless of what I do (browsing web/playing games/watching series) it has a tiny micro-second spike, once every second. See video of it here:

https/www.youtube.com/watch?v=2X046nVbGag
And another when i scroll faster (might be more noticable):
https/www.youtube.com/watch?v=NGnBZS9U7GI

I have no idea why this is, or what is causing it. I have googled a lot, but similar problems seem to be about FPS drops every second, in my case I cannot see any noticable FPS drops when looking at the overlay info while playing games.

Any ideas what can cause this and how to fix it?

 

[RaDiKaL_]

This could be some DPC issue in your system, causing small interruptions on your CPU that lead to these stutters regardless of what you're doing.

You can check if there's some DPC issue with this tool:

http/www.thesycon.de/eng/latency_check.shtml

 

[13ilbo]

This could be some DPC issue in your system, causing small interruptions on your CPU that lead to these stutters regardless of what you're doing.

You can check if there's some DPC issue with this tool:

http/www.thesycon.de/eng/latency_check.shtml

Thank you for your answer! I have no idea what DPC issues are, so I may have used the program wrong (dont know if I was supposed to use the computer while the program was running, anyhow, results:

Test interval: 500
Current latency: (from like 1000-1500, sometimes 2000)
Absolute maximum: 24346
got this comment from it: "Some device drivers on this machine behave bad and will probably cause drop-outs in real-time audio and/or video streams. To isolate the misbehaving driver use Device Manager and disable/re-enable various devices, one at a time. Try network and W-LAN adapters, modems, internal sound devices, USB host controllers, etc."

Thoughts?

 

[RaDiKaL_]

As expected, you're having DPC issues, just like it says, try disabling one driver at a time:

Go to control panel->System->Device Manager

Once there go into your network devices and disable your Ethernet controller (or wifi one if you're wirelessly connected) right click on the desired device then choose "disable".

Afterwards run the DPC again, see if the values drop considerably, as a reference, my pc hovers at around 112 with an absolute maximum of 146.

If the issue persists, try disabling your sound driver, if still unsuccessful it could be either your USB ports (but disabling them could lock you out of your pc with no control over kb nor mouse) so simply unplug all USB devices you currently have connected while leaving the DPC software running.

Finally it could be your GPU, for this simply uninstall its drivers, restart your PC and see if that fixes it.

Don't forget to re-enable your devices to get back internet connectivity and sound.

 

[13ilbo]

As expected, you're having DPC issues, just like it says, try disabling one driver at a time:

Go to control panel->System->Device Manager

Once there go into your network devices and disable your Ethernet controller (or wifi one if you're wirelessly connected) right click on the desired device then choose "disable".

Afterwards run the DPC again, see if the values drop considerably, as a reference, my pc hovers at around 112 with an absolute maximum of 146.

If the issue persists, try disabling your sound driver, if still unsuccessful it could be either your USB ports (but disabling them could lock you out of your pc with no control over kb nor mouse) so simply unplug all USB devices you currently have connected while leaving the DPC software running.

Finally it could be your GPU, for this simply uninstall its drivers, restart your PC and see if that fixes it.

Don't forget to re-enable your devices to get back internet connectivity and sound.

Wow, sick that you knew what it was from start! Now that you mentioned it, I actually remember someone speaking about updating the Wifi/ethernet driver in the device manager, but they had fewer but longer stutters so I didnt thought it was related.

Lets say its my wifi/lan driver, I obviously need it for daily work, what would I do if I find out it is it?

Big thank you for your answers!

 

[13ilbo]

As expected, you're having DPC issues, just like it says, try disabling one driver at a time:

Go to control panel->System->Device Manager

Once there go into your network devices and disable your Ethernet controller (or wifi one if you're wirelessly connected) right click on the desired device then choose "disable".

Afterwards run the DPC again, see if the values drop considerably, as a reference, my pc hovers at around 112 with an absolute maximum of 146.

If the issue persists, try disabling your sound driver, if still unsuccessful it could be either your USB ports (but disabling them could lock you out of your pc with no control over kb nor mouse) so simply unplug all USB devices you currently have connected while leaving the DPC software running.

Finally it could be your GPU, for this simply uninstall its drivers, restart your PC and see if that fixes it.

Don't forget to re-enable your devices to get back internet connectivity and sound.

Can I leave the checker running while disabling and monitoring the levels as I disable things? I did that, and disabled everything that could remotely be related to Networks, sound and USB, but no changes made the bars of values any different, do I have to restart the program every time i test disable something?

I also checked to actually scroll in a webpage for the wifi adapter as well as sound, but no success there

 

[RaDiKaL_]

Had it been your wifi/lan driver it was a matter of simply reinstalling their drivers, usually its a corrupted driver the issue.

Since there was no improvement that leaves us with your GPU drivers, or the HDD which I forgot earlier, check with task manager or procexp if your HDD is having some higher usage than normal (should be pretty much at 0% usage with some KBs here and there in read operations).

Also run a chkdsk /F on your HDD partitions and see if that fixes the issue.

 

[13ilbo]

Had it been your wifi/lan driver it was a matter of simply reinstalling their drivers, usually its a corrupted driver the issue.

Since there was no improvement that leaves us with your GPU drivers, or the HDD which I forgot earlier, check with task manager or procexp if your HDD is having some higher usage than normal (should be pretty much at 0% usage with some KBs here and there in read operations).

Also run a chkdsk /F on your HDD partitions and see if that fixes the issue.

Task manager check on drive: https/www.youtube.com/watch?v=PLXufP6CIFs
Is that normal?

Also, "chkdsk /F" is new to me, do I just write it in the cmd and thats it?

 

[RaDiKaL_]

Well its kinda weird that constant writing operation, however its small (150kB/s) so possibly some update going on, not really what I had in mind, likely nothing to worry about.

Yes, the chkdsk command is run from cmd with admin privileges, type chkdsk c: /F, it will tell you it needs to reboot to run it before loading windows, choose yes, restart your pc and you'll see it will load the process before getting into windows asking if you want to cancel it, simply don't press anything so it can start and do its thing.

 

[13ilbo]

Well its kinda weird that constant writing operation, however its small (150kB/s) so possibly some update going on, not really what I had in mind, likely nothing to worry about.

Yes, the chkdsk command is run from cmd with admin privileges, type chkdsk c: /F, it will tell you it needs to reboot to run it before loading windows, choose yes, restart your pc and you'll see it will load the process before getting into windows asking if you want to cancel it, simply don't press anything so it can start and do its thing.

Lets say I have problems with the HDD (or ssd in this case), would it be solved by formating and reinstalling everything? Would the things that "chkdsk c: /F" fixes be fixed by formating also? Figured I might as well as I keep important stuff in the cloud etc

 

[RaDiKaL_]

Ah wait there, don't run chkdsk on your SSD, for the SSD the TRIM function should fix any issue.

For this check this website:

http/mywindowshub.com/check-enable-disable-ssd-trim-support-windows-7-windows-8-1/

 

[13ilbo]

Ah wait there, don't run chkdsk on your SSD, for the SSD the TRIM function should fix any issue.

For this check this website:

http/mywindowshub.com/check-enable-disable-ssd-trim-support-windows-7-windows-8-1/

Hmm, okay, but same question there, would it be fixed through formating?

 

[RaDiKaL_]

Ah wait there, don't run chkdsk on your SSD, for the SSD the TRIM function should fix any issue.

For this check this website:

http/mywindowshub.com/check-enable-disable-ssd-trim-support-windows-7-windows-8-1/

Hmm, okay, but same question there, would it be fixed through formating?

Yes, if its a software / SSD issue then yes.

If the problem persists however that leaves us with your GPU (which most likely is a software issue that will get fixed with the fresh installation), CPU, RAM, ram usually leads to crashes, but lets hope its not the cpu.

 

[13ilbo]

Ah wait there, don't run chkdsk on your SSD, for the SSD the TRIM function should fix any issue.

For this check this website:

http/mywindowshub.com/check-enable-disable-ssd-trim-support-windows-7-windows-8-1/

Hmm, okay, but same question there, would it be fixed through formating?

Yes, if its a software / SSD issue then yes.

If the problem persists however that leaves us with your GPU (which most likely is a software issue that will get fixed with the fresh installation), CPU, RAM, ram usually leads to crashes, but lets hope its not the cpu.

Aright, I think I will go with a format and fresh install then, as most files are backed up in cloud etc it seems easiest I think

I will write later when I have done it (next week), thank you for all your help so far!

 

[matt_9812]

This could be some DPC issue in your system, causing small interruptions on your CPU that lead to these stutters regardless of what you're doing.

You can check if there's some DPC issue with this tool:

http/www.thesycon.de/eng/latency_check.shtml

You are a legend, solved my problem but installing the latest chipset and lan drivers for my motherboard.

 

[8bit4life.olsen]

Since it's October and we're in the spirit of necroing threads, I wanted to say I also fixed my 1/second system stutter too just now. I found a SATA cable blocking my CPU fan that didn't give any error reports

 

[sonarctica]

Your sata cable blocked the cpu fan? Care to explain?`Cause i have this issue now with the 1 sec stutter.

Even chrome can freeze up to 1-2 sec before resuming.