Tech Support: CPU peaks every 15 seconds when using USB attached sound devices ~ Fix Your PC Errors & Speed Up Your PC

9/23/2016

Tech Support: CPU peaks every 15 seconds when using USB attached sound devices

CPU peaks every 15 seconds when using USB attached sound devices

The problem is that the CPU (CPU 1 of 7) peaks every 15 seconds when using USB attached sound devices.
This is causing sound distortion and in some cases the USB sound device gets disconnected if the load gets to much.
I've been reading lots of older similar posts about this, both here in the Microsoft community as well as others on the internet - without any luck.
The problem is identical to what Microsoft supposedly fixed in KB981214 for Windows 7 (Without Service Pack 1)
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/981214/en-us
I am however running on Windows 7, SP1 and this update is included in the service pack.
I also read that this update doesnt work in some cases so Microsoft issued another fix for this:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2529073
But when I try to install the update I get the message that it is allready installed on my system.
Perhaps the most obvious place to start investigating would be the drivers for the sound devices.
But as I've tried using several different USB sound devices from different manufacturers, and where some are using the generic Windows driver (for example a
simple USB-headset) - I think I can rule that out.
One noticeable thing is though, that the peaks vary in load for different USB-sound devices.
Using a UBS-headset for example produces 50% CPU peaks every 15 seconds, while some other devices can be up to 80-90%
CPU peaks.
When I disconnect the USB-sound device, the CPU load immediately becomes flat, with no peaks.
I have an Intel Core I7 CPU, and these peaks only occur in CPU nr 1.
I've updated every driver to the latest as well as BIOS.
That includes the latest driver for the Intel chipset for the USB-controller.
My guess is that there is a problem with the USBPORT.SYS driver (as described in the first KB-fix I mentioned) which wasnt
fixed in the update.
Some of the other things I've tested is running scans for DPC and ISR excecution times using applications such as LatencyMon.
This is often mentioned in threads regarding USB sound problems.
And there some problems
can be found that might explain occasional dropouts or clicks in the sound - but these do not explain these systematic CPU-peaks resulting the devices sometimes to disconnect.
Three drivers mostly stand out from the rest and that is the wireless network device
(NDIS.SYS), graphics (NVIDIA-driver) and USBPORT.SYS.
I have uppdated to the latest drivers for the wireless NIC as well as the latest NVIDIA driver - without any change.
The DPC for the Wireless device gets significantly lower when it is disabled in the device
manager, but it doesnt effect the CPU peaks at all.
Further more I cant really see a clear connection with the DPC/ISR times when I'm comparing these with the times of the CPU-peaks, making me think that the issue is not due to DPC/ISR.
In some Microsoft forum threads I've seen that people are asked to boot up in safe mode to see if the problems remains.
I tried that but, but windows doesnt allow me to manually start the sound services in safe mode,
so I cant really test if it makes any difference or not.
I've also uninstalled all USB-controllers, making Windows reinstall them on next startup.
I noticed that the NVIDIA chipset seems to be sharing IRQ with the Intel chipset controllers for USB.
I wonder if that could be the root to this? But windows doesn't allow me to manually change the IRQ-settings, and
there is no option for this in the BIOS as well.
I've really run out of ideas! Grateful for any advice :-P
System spec:
Windows 7, 64bit, Enterprise (SP1)
Dell Latitude E6420
Intel Core I7
4GB RAM

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9/23/2016