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[SOLVED] DPC Problem, followed tutorial, but I'm lost.

Okay so, after compressing over and over, I think I have to upload this to a third party website. I tried to upload my files multiple times using the forums, but unfortunately, the 7MB was way too small and I have no idea how to compress any further than a .zip, or .7z.

I ran the tests you wanted and named them appropriately, and I also included an extra test. I noticed lately that when any window is maximized, or re-sized to a bigger window, the crackling in the audio occurs (from the DPC,) I also noticed while watching a video on Twitch through Google Chrome today, that when I have a livestream maximized, the issue occurs.

I'm also not sure if I mentioned this, but I believe I uninstalled the drivers for Blue Eye Automation, after you said something about them. So, those should be gone, unless I messed that up. The uninstall for them was a .bat, and I ran that, restarted.

I never used Drop Box, so hopefully I did this correctly..
https://www.dropbox.com/s/cusw8e7k9ekzmva/Tests.zip

I also used your xperf commands you told me to use earlier in the thread, because I'm not really knowledgeable in that.
 
<left field warning = I could be well off-track here, consider it a remote possibility>

You have IE10 or 11 installed and an HD48xx series graphics card. A prerequisite Update was needed before IE9 could be upgraded - that update has a number of potential side-effects that I've seen reported and have suffered from first hand; it frequently affects PCs with HD4xxx installed and makes changes to the following:
Direct2D
DirectWrite
Direct3D
Windows Imaging Component (WIC)
Windows Advanced Rasterization Platform (WARP)
Windows Animation Manager (WAM)
XPS Document API
H.264 Video Decoder
JPEG XR codec

From the little I know, the above changes appear to affect (some of?) the areas you are having problems with. Your graphics hardware (and presumably drivers) are in the ballpark affected too.

If you'd like to test this out by removing the KB, first uninstall IE11 (and then 10, if you stepped up) then remove the KB.

After the required reboots, hide the KB in Windows Update then use the IE 10 and IE 11 blocking toolkits (Download Toolkit to Disable Automatic Delivery of Internet Explorer 10 from Official Microsoft Download Center and Download Toolkit to Disable Automatic Delivery of Internet Explorer 11 from Official Microsoft Download Center) to prevent it being silently re-installed by Automatic Updates.
 
Hi,

You did a great job gathering the reports - thank you.

I check all the reports and it seems that zooming highest DPC in all of them (apart from EverythingClosedDoingNothing) shows dxgkrnl.sys as the cause. Checking the stack, I see that atikmdag.sys is the only driver that is active at the time. Unfortunately, due to the fact that AMD/ATI doesn't provide symbols for their drivers, it's not possible to see what's going on in that driver, but I'm pretty sure it calls dxgkrnl.sys at some point:

DXG.PNG​

Having the above information, I was able to find this page - Bug Report: Excessive DPC spikes caused by atikmdag.sys, in Windows 7. Even the post is back from year 2010 and the guy is using a different version of drivers, the the case seems to be matching yours. He also mentions using VGA drivers solves the issue, which is what you confirmed (at least while resizing Steam windows) as well.

Could we try few things?

  1. Download and install a Beta driver (AMD Catalyst 13.11) released this month from here. See if it solves the issue.
  2. If it does not, download and install the old driver mentioned on the page above from here.

Let me know the results.
 
I tried what TomasD suggested, but there hasn't been a change. I tried the beta drivers, the old driver, and I installed the one through Windows Update, just to see if it would make a difference, unfortunately, there was no change.

This is also happening on fresh installs on my spare HDD. I'll try uninstalling all of that either tonight or tomorrow Satrow.
 
satrow said:
<left field warning = I could be well off-track here, consider it a remote possibility>

You have IE10 or 11 installed and an HD48xx series graphics card. A prerequisite Update was needed before IE9 could be upgraded - that update has a number of potential side-effects that I've seen reported and have suffered from first hand; it frequently affects PCs with HD4xxx installed and makes changes to the following:
Direct2D
DirectWrite
Direct3D
Windows Imaging Component (WIC)
Windows Advanced Rasterization Platform (WARP)
Windows Animation Manager (WAM)
XPS Document API
H.264 Video Decoder
JPEG XR codec

From the little I know, the above changes appear to affect (some of?) the areas you are having problems with. Your graphics hardware (and presumably drivers) are in the ballpark affected too.

If you'd like to test this out by removing the KB, first uninstall IE11 (and then 10, if you stepped up) then remove the KB.

After the required reboots, hide the KB in Windows Update then use the IE 10 and IE 11 blocking toolkits (Download Toolkit to Disable Automatic Delivery of Internet Explorer 10 from Official Microsoft Download Center and Download Toolkit to Disable Automatic Delivery of Internet Explorer 11 from Official Microsoft Download Center) to prevent it being silently re-installed by Automatic Updates.
Click to expand...


Okay, so I finally had time to try this, and it doesn't seem to have worked, unfortunately. I'm not really sure what to do at this point, the crackling audio is really annoying (only occurs when Steam is up, or playing a video with subtitles, sometimes when resizing other windows.) And not being able to watch videos with subtitles is equally annoying. Do you think if I get a new GPU, that the problem might resolve itself?
 
TomasD said:
Japanimation said:
Do you think if I get a new GPU, that the problem might resolve itself?
Click to expand...

Can't say for sure.

By the way, is your GPU inserted into blue or into mazarine PCIe port (the one nearer to the CPU)?
Click to expand...

It is in a PCIe 2.0 slot, I have 2 PCIe slots, and then 3 PCI on my motherboard. It's in the one nearest to the CPU (It's a large card, and would get in the way of the SATA's for my HDD if I moved it to the other slot, which is also PCIe 2.0.
 
Japanimation said:
It is in a PCIe 2.0 slot, I have 2 PCIe slots, and then 3 PCI on my motherboard. It's in the one nearest to the CPU (It's a large card, and would get in the way of the SATA's for my HDD if I moved it to the other slot, which is also PCIe 2.0.
Click to expand...

OK, that's good. I just wanted to be sure, because the manual says:

If you intend to install only One expansion card, make sure that the expansion card is installed on the mazarine PCIE x16 slot (PCI_EX1)
Click to expand...

One more thing: you mentioned earlier that default VGA drivers doesn't cause issues on your spare HDD with fresh Windows installation. What if you remove drivers from the current installation? Is the issue is gone too?
 
TomasD said:
Japanimation said:
It is in a PCIe 2.0 slot, I have 2 PCIe slots, and then 3 PCI on my motherboard. It's in the one nearest to the CPU (It's a large card, and would get in the way of the SATA's for my HDD if I moved it to the other slot, which is also PCIe 2.0.
Click to expand...

OK, that's good. I just wanted to be sure, because the manual says:

If you intend to install only One expansion card, make sure that the expansion card is installed on the mazarine PCIE x16 slot (PCI_EX1)
Click to expand...

One more thing: you mentioned earlier that default VGA drivers doesn't cause issues on your spare HDD with fresh Windows installation. What if you remove drivers from the current installation? Is the issue is gone too?
Click to expand...

It's hard to check, because the max resolution for the standard VGA drivers is relatively small. Steam seems to be okay, but I can't check the subtitles in Media Player Classic because subtitles don't work without the GPU driver (I'm not the most knowledgeable, but I believe it has something to do with Direct X or something?)

Is there any way that I can test if the issue is occuring on the VGA driver? I'd imagine doing the test you told me, and then re-sizing the Steam window, and moving it. But.. It only occurs when Steam's window is so big, and I don't think I can make it that big, haha.

On a side note, I did go ahead and order a new GPU. I ordered a GTX 760 from MSI, here: (Newegg.com - MSI Gaming N760 TF 2GD5/OC GeForce GTX 760 2GB 256-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 3.0 SLI Support Video Card)
 
Yes, you can run xperf while using standard VGA drivers and moving steam window or doing any other activities that could potentially load the GPU. Anyhow, we still won't be 100% sure that's due to the drivers.

Please let me know how the new GPU works out for you.
 
TomasD said:
Yes, you can run xperf while using standard VGA drivers and moving steam window or doing any other activities that could potentially load the GPU. Anyhow, we still won't be 100% sure that's due to the drivers.

Please let me know how the new GPU works out for you.
Click to expand...

Hey TomasD, I just wanted to take the time to say thank you. I somehow fixed the issue today, and I'm not even entirely sure how. I woke up today and cleaned out my computer in preparation for the new graphic's card that's supposed to arrive after New Years at some point, I used an air dust can and just wiped down a lot of the excess dust. After that, I re-seated all my components, hooked it up, turned it on. When I launched Steam, I noticed there was no crackling, so I tried to play a video file with subtitles, and to my surprise, there was no stuttering, distortion, or crackling.

Somehow, the problem had resolved itself. So, thanks for all your help. Although we couldn't find the exact problem, I appreciate your help and you taught me some new things.
 
Hey,

It's good to hear the issue is gone. It's possible it was caused by dust, which was resulting in higher GPU temperatures (something we forgot to look into).

If possible, please mark this topic as solved. Good luck!
 
Thanks again for all the help guys, this is an awesome forum. I'll mark the thread as solved :).

Edit:
As an added note, the GPU I ordered came in today, although it had nothing to do with my problem, it's working great!
 

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