Mouse movement skyrockets CPU Utilization (DPC Issue)

[HutchtheGhost]

Okay, This issue has followed me through numerous windows 7 installs.

What happens is that I play certain games (so far only Borderlands and Mass Effect 2 set it off) for anywhere between an hour and two hours. Out of nowhere I start to get lag when I move my mouse. My sound crackles every time I move my mouse and playing the game becomes impossible. It is not an issue of overheating because I play many other games and monitor my temperatures and these games are nothing special in terms of heat. Also - I know it is my mouse causing the lag because I can look at complex things and strafe back and forth (obviously requiring things to be redrawn) and I receive ZERO LAG. But if I move my mouse in a tiny circle it causes massive lag.

If I exit the game once this has occurred it will continue to act this way until I restart my computer. If I open task manager and sort by processes it shows 30-40% utilization when moving my mouse but no processes are to blame. If I look at my cores in task manager my first core gets almost maxed every time I move my mouse. If I stop moving my mouse (or scrolling) it immediately drops back down to 0% and will shoot back up the second I move the mouse again.

I ran Process Explorer and it appears "DPCs" or Deferred Procedure Calls are to blame as they appear on the list and match the CPU usage EXACTLY. It is obviously a specific driver that is causing this overload and there are guides I've tried to follow online to dump the contents of my DPC to see which specific drivers are eating resources but I can't seem to get any of them to work with windows 7 x64. I would use DPC latency viewer and try disabling my USB because my mouse is USB to see if it fixes the issue but I would have no way of re-enabling it at that point.

and yes I've used DPC Latency viewer and it maxes out every time I move the mouse and claims a driver is responsible but this is not a program that can tell me WHICH driver.

I really need help to capture the contents of my DPC.

 

[505090]

from your description I would have to assume it's the mouse driver

uninstall the mouse in device manager and reboot the mouse will reinstall it's self (just a though might need a new mouse)

you can disable the usb on your computer and use the keyboard to navigate to any and all functions on the computer, not convenient but fully functional

if you feel it is the usb disable usb and try a ps2 mouse they even make adapters to turn usb mice into ps2

 

[HutchtheGhost]

Yeah, I think the same thing. I think I successfully dumped my DPC information and the highest process was "Unknown" so that ended up being a waste of time completely. I also updated the audio/network drivers last night just in case and I've had this issue with both the windows 7 default and logitech setpoint drivers installed so assuming its actually using the drivers it says it device manager that would mean this issue traverses multiple mouse drivers as well. I'm going to put a few hours into the game right now which should trigger it and I will try disabling my mouse/usb if/when it does.

EDIT: Before I started playing I decided to try the DPC latency viewer to make sure I had a pre-game baseline. It turned out I was already being affected already because I played for about an hour last night but not to the point where my processor would go to 30%, it would go to around 9% (which is still different than pre-game as it normally NEVER JUMPS). I disabled both the mice (default/the logitech) and my logitech stops responding as expected *BUT* every time I would move it it would still cause my cpu to jump even though it was doing nothing on the screen(I could even move it around to different usb ports and disable and it would do the same thing). I figured it must be some ongoing usb issue and started disabling all the usb stuff, I eventually tried unplugging my keyboard ps2/usb converter and instantly even the baseline dropped significantly and mouse movement didn't cause anymore jumps.

Conclusion: I think it was the ps2 to usb converter. I will game for a few hours to find out.

 

[505090]

good luck

 

[HutchtheGhost]

Just played for like 4 hours straight, it must have been the USB to PS2 converter.

 

[HutchtheGhost]

Best answer selected by HutchtheGhost.