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High kernel usage (after upgrade) [possibly DPC caused]
Hello everyone,
I'd like to request some help troubleshooting this bothersome issue of mine. In fact it has been happening for months now. I've even asked about on Superuser under topic "High kernel usage in Windows 10 (after upgrade from Windows 7 to Windows 10)".
My Windows version is: 10.0.19044.1889 (21H2)
To eat the humble pie from the start, I still haven't got to the point where I have fully try to disable all services and so on (do the clean start), but I'm definitely going to do so very soon.
To include some symptoms, I'd like to show some screenshots from LatencyMon:
The reason I named the thread high kernel:
The interesting thing is that whenever I tried to pinpoint a driver causing high DPC / ISR, every time I ended up with a different one.
The system is normally swift after start but overtime the performance degrades. There is simply (or at least how I understand it) too little processing power left for user-space with all the kernel times going on (since something like ISR / DPC has higher priority in execution than user-space). The kernel times from the beginning are about 15-30% and later (after several hours) these numbers are higher (20-60%) as you can see here:
What I usually do is log out and log in which restores the swiftness (almost like after reboot).
Basically how this started is that I updated my Windows 7 to Windows 10 back in the February and from the start it was a s***show. Even the first issue was curious, when Windows 10 ignored GeForce drivers and started to use TeamViewer display driver. This left me with feeling there will be many obstacles ahead. Also using Iobit Driver Updater back when I was at Windows 7 was probably not a good idea.
But the stay at the topic given, I did an investigation (or at least tried) a few days ago when I recorded ETL using Windows Performance Recorder and then had a look with Windows Performance Analyzer. I did it at time when kernel usage was as high as 80% (the screenshot above) so it may yield some insights give that somebody could have a look at it. Here is a snippet (probably not much telling):
Other thing to note, I have ESET Internet Security installed and I've seen people putting blame on it. My personal opinion is that there are leftovers from the Windows 7 (some drivers obviously) which are misbehaving. I am considering a "repair installation" in hope that it could somehow help.
What I've done in the past few months was trying to reinstall some of the drivers. For example I completely removed GPU drivers using DDU and if I correctly remember I also removed ESET using their special uninstaller (although I've seen in these forums that one should not be used).
I also did run DISM, SFC, chkdsk on multiple occasions.
Interesting note: I normally don't have BSOD but today I had one. With ndis.sys. Not sure if it's related. It was DRIVER_IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL.
Note no. 2: I also have another Windows 10 installation (which is basically almost bare one, I used it only for testing back when I was at Windows 7 to see if it was worth the while). Or used it for Win 10 exclusive apps. This one does not have any problems.
I also don't have so much crackling sound as many people do. When I do have them, it's at a stage when the system becomes almost unusable so I relog or reboot anyways.
Thanks to anybody in advance.
PS: Sorry for the messy information, my brain usually tends to blast at all directions. I'd gladly focus on one given aspect at a time.