Solved: High CPU from Process Explorer's DPCs

[obidon]

On my computer, I have process explorer automatically run on startup, and it shows a graph of CPU usuage in the system notification area. Sometimes it shows a lot of CPU usuage being used, and so I open up the program to see what process is taking up so much CPU. But process explorer shows that DPCs are what is taking it up, and it is almost always over 60%. I looked up DPCs and it stands for Deferred Procedure calls, which has to do with hardware I believe, but I don't have any external hardware devices attached when the DPCs take up alot of CPU. I'd appreciate it if someone could help me solve this problem. Thanks.

 

[obidon]

Anyone? Please? Thanks.

 

[jasaiyajin]

Bad drivers? Check your device manager for problems. I've had that happen to me a long time ago, my laptop would alter my multiplier clock cause of overheating issues. I would play a game, raise the cpu temperature, the DPC would lower the clock and lag the game. I found out with dual monitors, one running the game and the other process explorer. However, the DCP would consume 20% or more when it activated. Also, check your event viewer in the administrative tools for windows logged problems. Report your findings here.

 

[obidon]

Thanks jasaiyajin. There wasn't anything in device manager, but I checked the event viewer and I had several different types of errors in each of the categories. So now that I've briefly identified the source of the problem, what can I do to fix it?

 

[jasaiyajin]

Visit http://eventid.net/ and input the Event ID numbers associated with the errors. Also, just because it's an error, it may just be nothing to worry about. I setup a network drive and if it's offline, it will show up as a problem in the event viewer.

The Deferred Procedure Calls are hardware related, hardware communicates through drivers - try changing your graphics driver to a different version. It won't tell you anything in the device manager usually, that's why it's so hard to diagnose those high cpu spikes generated from the DPC. There's a MS program called Kernrate, but it's a command line operated program and is hard to use unless you spend quite some time tinkering with it. That's why I would just try different drivers, eliminating each piece of hardware one by one.

 

[obidon]

Thanks Jasaiyajin. I went to that site and inputed some event IDs, but it didn't seem to help me do anything else. So then I did what you said and updated a lot of different drivers in devmgmt.msc. It turns out that the my wireless network card needed to be updated; it updated from v4 to v7 (which I think means it was pretty outdated). So now it seems that I don't get random high CPU spikes anymore, unless its from a high processing application, but nothing really is from DPCs. Thanks for all your help.