Testing Windows 10 - error driver install

[medway]

I´d be interested in a step-by-step tutorial how to manage using SCOPEv7.0 x64 w/ Win 10.

I just aquired a Lenovo W540, Intel i7 quad 2.5GHz stock speed, 6MB L3 cache, 256GB SSD, 20GB RAM, expresscard 34 slot, USB3, USB2,- even a individual true Thunderbolt port too.
It looks like new (no scratches, dents or such), battery is 99%, almost new PSU replacement and came w/ Win10 Pro x64 installed.
Payed EUR 366,- shipping included.

Actually I managed disabling all in UEFI (as also Windows OS) possible energy saving options and running all cores stock speed permanent, while true speed is 2.59 GHz.
But it´s still not perfect because when running latency monitor (and the 32Bit DPClat app), a TCP/IP driver and some APCI driver might disturb the scenario after some time,- in fact after more than 2 hrs or such.
(Interesting: The same happens when testing my Win10 x64 office machine,- Intel i3 quad, 3.6GHz, 6MB L3 cache on AsRock Z390,- for audio)

I think there are still options to optimize.

I investigated a bit and understood it´s impossible making "disabling driver signing" permanent.
I hope I´m wrong and it´s not true, just because,- who want´s to do these ajustments every time again and before using SCOPE ?

In fact, I really hoped SCOPE v7 is for Win10.

I also aquired a used S|C expresscard w/ HDMI 1.3 high speed cable but didn´t try to install before asking here.

All instructions (in german as well) are welcome.

thx in advance



Bud

I'm pretty sure v7 works on Win 10 without the driver signing. And I also figure the signing is a one time thing when you install v5.

This is an old thread and was about installing 5.1 on Win 10.

[medway]

Btw seems I had to one other command to get it to work. Got it installed now.

[garyb]

v7 does not require disabling of driver signing as it has a signed driver.

[Bud Weiser]

I'm pretty sure v7 works on Win 10 without the driver signing. And I also figure the signing is a one time thing when you install v5.

This is an old thread and was about installing 5.1 on Win 10.

Ooops,- o.k. thx for the info.

Doesn´t solve my "minor" problem though ...

When I play back audio in Win 10, ACPI.sys is still the highest reported DPC routine execution time (424.1 microseconds),- followed by ntoskrnl.exe _ NT Kernel _System (441.41 microseconds).

Highest reported ISR execuition time is 58.8 microseconds,- wdf01000.sys kernelmodedriver- framework runtime.

Actually it runs about 1 hr. now ...

It doesn´t crackle w/ stereo playback,- but in DPClat and in addition to LatencyMon info,- I see a mixed graph of green and YELLOW (!) columns running constantly on time axis.
The interpretation means DPC latency increases over the 1000 microsecond mark (yellow).
So,- the DPC latency is much higher than the experience is I made w/ tweaked WinXP and Win7 machines.

Now we come to the point how to optimize exactly this behaviour.

I remember machines where DPClat monitored a constant stream of very low heigth green columns, far - far below the (green) 500 microsecond mark !

My main issue is unability interpreting correctly and on a level it makes sense to me what LatencyMon reports and DPClat shows.
As an example, I don´t think it´s possible to deactivate a APCI.sys driver at all and that might be also the case for many other drivers and services.

So, there must be options to optimize and some advise would be good !



Bud

[garyb]

remove Skype and OneDrive.

win10 is just stupidity. there are so many things embedded into it. you CAN run without trouble with little or no tweaks, however. if you have to do extreme optimizing something is wrong. Windows 10 MUST be connected to the internet. it MUST be allowed to update or it will mess everything up. Windows 10 is no longer considered a product, it is a service. give Windows 20 minutes to do its thing and update everything BEFORE trying to work, or else there will be trouble. M$ expects win10 to be active 24/7 and M$ expects to be in control the entire time. this goes along with the bogus(non-existant) 5g and everything being "smart" enough to run your life from your cell phone.

i counsel avoiding being too technical. there is no point in trying to wring every last bit of performance out of win10. you will probably just make things worse.

[valis]

A few things:

Make sure you check DPC Latency with either your power profile in "High Performance" or with enough of a CPU load to keep all cores active. Clocking activities alone can cause DPC spikes, this includes GPU drivers clocking down (adding a second screen can prevent the lowest power states for GPU, as can setting things manually in the driver control panel *and* windows for PCIe power savings to off).

ACPI.sys means it's your interrupt stack, basically. Since it's all virtualized on current hardware, you'll need to drill down in something like Performance Monitor to find the offending hardware (driver) and resolve things. It's not as likely to be a hardware conflict per se, as it may just be something not performing its task quickly enough and releasing the stack.

If you read up on MS's documentation for ACPI.sys you'll see it explicitly lists these two things: Power and Peripherals.

Also do what GaryB suggests, Skype sitting in the background benefits noone other than MS, and it can be run on other devices quite easily. Onedrive won't matter unless the core of your work is MS applications and Outlook.

[garyb]

no, OneDrive tries to archive everything, and it uses cycles even when there's nothing it's allowed to archive, or even when there is no account to archive to...

also, the cpu should be set to 100% operation, minimum and maximum in the power settings.

[Bud Weiser]

thx Gary and Valis !

The scenario:
I used Win Privacy to de-activate all the crap Win10 apps like On-Drive, Skype and WLan, Bluetooth etc. are de-activates too,- and the laptop is connected to the internet always while testing.
And also on my office machine I also tried to tweak for audio, On-Drive and Skype is de-activated.
Nonetheless, for later audio work, I established a shortcut for enabling/disabling the ethernet connection on my desktop.
I see options pausing automatic updates or simply make sure having the latest before pausing.
And I use AVAST antivirus, allowing to be switched off for a given period of time, until next launch of the machine or completely.

But,- i FEAR de-installing all the unnecessary Win10 apps because already WinPrivacy alerts for.

What do you think ?



Bud

[Bud Weiser]

also, the cpu should be set to 100% operation, minimum and maximum in the power settings.

It is.

It was one of the 1st things i did, then installed RealTemp to check CPU (core) temperatures etc..

Maybe the "about 1000 microsecond DPC latency" is the max to get out from Win10,- just only because it´s almost identical on "office" desktop and laptop ?



Bud

[garyb]

too much thought.
remove onedrive and skype, the others haven't been a problem for me.

there is no point deactivating ethernet.
pausing updates stops windows from trying to install them, but not checking for them. again, a pointless step. you are not in control. give up and use the machine as it wants to be used. XP is a thing of the past and you are just a cog in the machine. i have not had a problem with antivirus(i use Avira).

take your pointless vaccine, get ready for the global economic reset and international stasi and SMILE! your computers know what they are doing!

seriously, though. if my old quad-core2 can work flawlessly under win10, your computer should, too.
disable EIST and hyperthreading and any turbo mode, and set the cpu min/max to 100% should be the main changes. update before working, and it should be reliable. if it isn't, you just need to figure out which app or driver is eating cpu cycles unnecessarily. avoid trying to over tweak, it's not helpful....or go back to win7.

[garyb]

Maybe the "about 1000 microsecond DPC latency" is the max to get out from Win10,- just only because it´s almost identical on "office" desktop and laptop ?



Bud

it probably is.

i would remove RealTemp, once you know that the cooling is working.

[Bud Weiser]

remove onedrive and skype, the others haven't been a problem for me.

When you say "remove" you mean uninstall, right ?
Or is de-activation enough ?

there is no point deactivating ethernet.

When I temporary defeat antivirus because it always looks for updates too, I´d better defeat ethernet too,- no ?

pausing updates stops windows from trying to install them, but not checking for them. again, a pointless step.

O.k., didn´t know.

take your pointless vaccine, get ready for the global economic reset and international stasi and SMILE! your computers know what they are doing!

disable EIST and hyperthreading ...

already done.

and any turbo mode,

In this BIOS/UEFI, no dedicated parameter to do so.
But Intel Speedstep disabled, all performance parameters set to max., virtualization and all I don´t need disabled.

What´s Intel "smart connect" ?
Does it affect MS Windows OS updates incl. app updates,- or is it worth to disable ?

On OS level energy savings, all is set to high performance (and might work w/ some "balanced" settings too).

and set the cpu min/max to 100% should be the main changes.

done on OS level.
I see CPU running constant speed, all cores, no throttle.

... you just need to figure out which app or driver is eating cpu cycles unnecessarily.

Those w/ highest execution values change in Latency Mon.
A few minutes ago, it was some "Ndis.sys" w/ the highest score of all I´ve seen before,- nearly 800 microsec. ...

B.t.w., the laptop has 2 graphic cards,- iGPU and Nvidia Quatro K1100m ...
When I investigate in MSinfo32, the latter shares memory adress w/ CPU.
I wonder if that matters.

In BIOS, I´ve possibly overseen an option to disable that card,- if such option exists at all.
I remember it´s set to [AUTO], but priority is iGPU.
When I disable in device manager only,- would that prevent from loading the Nvidia driver ???

... avoid trying to over tweak, it's not helpful....or go back to win7.

Is it easy going back from Win10 to Win7 once Win10 is installed and there´s no separate Win7 product key existing for this machine ?

Thx for all your helpful advise Gary.



Bud

[Bud Weiser]

i would remove RealTemp, once you know that the cooling is working.

i would remove RealTemp, once you know that the cooling is working.

I didn´t install the application,- just only put the .exe in a "Tools" folder, execute on demand, then close.
I did in the hope it does nothing anymore when closed.



Bud

[garyb]

ok.

no, it's not easy if you never had win7....win10 will work.

i think you are over-complicating things. you should not need latency monitoring to find any problems.
the internal graphics should not be active if the card is. priority should be to PCIe.
i found it better to uninstall extra apps. windows always wants to reactivate them when there is a big update.
not"high performance", but "balanced" and set the cpu min/max to 100%. who cares what the os says. tell it without question. also, disable usb selective suspend. turn off PCIe link state power management. that's it. selective suspend and link state management are optional, but the cpu setting isn't.

why do you want to disable the Nvidia driver? isn't it a win10 driver? a LOT of people claim that there are NVidia driver problems, but i have never had them when using a win10 driver. i guess gamers have other problems. i have had more Radeon(ATI, AMD) issues than Nvidia issues. if you don't have a win10 driver(older cards sometimes do not), then there will be issues.

smart connect doesn't matter in a computer that doesn't sleep. it can be disabled if you like.

beware of disabling things that don't absolutely need to be disabled in the bios. there can be strange repercussions.

don't go overboard tweaking. latency mon is perfectly worthless for a computer that works correctly, and only another hint for one that doesn't. XP days are over. it's definitely not useless when there's trouble, but it won't tell you exactly what to do. i just use the details page of the task manager to find the little piggies.

i use system information-hardware resources-conflicts/sharing to find any usb controllers sharing an irq with the cards. then i disable any controller i find sharing with the card in the device manager.

just make sure everything updates when you turn on the computer. update manually if you must, then you don't have to worry about an update for another 24 hours(usually).

it really should be easy to have a reasonably well working system. you won't be able to squeeze every possible bit of performance out of the thing. doing so will only make the computer unreliable. it's better to work with its limitations. just like a race car whose motor needs to be rebuilt every time is races, running at the ragged edge only makes it less reliable, so don't try unless you like having a computer that never quite works. or that's just what i think.

now, if you can't run a reasonable number of tracks then that's another thing, but that will be defective hardware or an absolute pig of an app, or an outdated driver. you should be able to track it down.

don't expect perfection. much like Nomad, who thought he was perfect, computers never are. Windows itself is so flawed that there is no way anything else can work perfectly. it should work more than well enough, however.

i hadn't used real temp, but if it's just an exe, it should be fine. once you know the cpu temp is normal, it's done and that's fine.

[valis]

nVIDIA did have some branch releases that had DPC latency problems, but this was either a brand new branch, a branch that was compensating for issues with a new GPU core design launch, or when they massively changed the architecture in ways that affected underlying timing. These were never the WHQL branches given by Windows itself (they they were signed & WHQL approved), and reading on a forum like guru3d.com would reveal that there were only a few of these releases with DPC issues.

So GaryB is correct on this front, it shouldn't be 'commonly known' that 'Nvidia causes DPC spikes', rather it was a rarity and if you don't upgrade to the latest & greatest gaming drivers then it's a non-issues.

If a temp reading application causes a spike, this again is an issue with the motherboard reporting method, meaning the hardware and software to enable this. Post 2015 this is a chip that implements SMBIOS 3.0, and 2.0 prior ro that (my 2001 era Xeon is still SMBIOS 1.x and only gives me 3 temps--motherboard, cpu package and case temp--and 2 fan speeds that aggregate all onboard fans into 1 number). Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) is how SMBIOS is read when running WIn, and the driver really shouldn't cause a problem on any decent board in this era. Most apps have a polling rate of like 1 second as well, so anything more frequent than that is likely to be a different driver causing the WMI driver to also wait.

And so on it goes. The use of Win10Privacy, O&O ShutUp10 and so on are less about removing background apps that conflict with audio tasks (though they can) and more about simply stopping data collecting that is then uploaded to various cloud destinations during idle time. MS does NOT need to story my entire clipboard history and the state of every application run! But this doesn't have much to do with audio performance per-se, aside from a general issue. I have disabled OneDrive on every machine but one since the launch of Win10, so I would defer to GaryB on its specific issues. It's worth noting that I *have* had issues with dropbox interferering with other tasks, though this was a network level issue.

[Bud Weiser]

...win10 will work.

thx,- saves time !

the internal graphics should not be active if the card is. priority should be to PCIe.

I double checked,- in BIOS no option to deactivate.
Device manager the only way,- if necessary at all.

i found it better to uninstall extra apps. windows always wants to reactivate them when there is a big update.
not"high performance", but "balanced" and set the cpu min/max to 100%.

O.k.,- I´ll de-install some apps then.

... disable usb selective suspend. turn off PCIe link state power management.

I disabled CPU and PCI Express Power management in BIOS and now hope that´s what you mean.
That´s simply what´s available in this BIOS.

Cannot find anything called "USB suspective suspend".
There are only:

USB UEFI BIOS Support [disabled] and can be enabled on demand
Always On USB [Enable / Disable] "if disabled, USB ports are disabled during low power states"

But I think, w/ my other BIOS- and Windows power plan settings,- there shouldn´t be any "low power states" at all,- no ?

USB 3.0 Mode [disabled / enabled / auto] - scratches my head ...

disable: Disables and hides the USB3 controller. Work as USB 2.0 Mode
enable: Enables USB3 Mode and allows USB3 to be supported in the OS
auto: Connects and routes appropriate USB 3.0 or 2.0 ports.

I leaved it to [AUTO] actually but wonder if it should be set to [Enabled] or not.

why do you want to disable the Nvidia driver? isn't it a win10 driver?

I don´t WANT,- I wonder if I should or not.
It´s what was for download on Lenovo support site for exactly this laptop, model and serial number.
You connect to the web and the laptop updates BIOS, drivers and all that pre installed Lenovo apps, diagnostics and such.

My only laptops were old MACs, Powerbook G3 and G4 and I don´t have much experience w/ Win PC laptops.
That´s why I have so many questions.
This laptop came preinstalled w/ the Lenovo service apps, Win10 Pro x64 and drivers,- worked out of the box.
Now I try modifying this installation because the original owner was some tech employee for Thyssen steel plant and a hobby gamer.
He had completely different demands and ran out of graphics power for his work and out of CPU and graphics power for the games.

smart connect doesn't matter in a computer that doesn't sleep. it can be disabled if you like.

O.k., thank you and done.

beware of disabling things that don't absolutely need to be disabled in the bios. there can be strange repercussions.

Only energy savings and devices like W-LAN/WAN, BT, Camera, Mic, Fingerprint Reader, Thunderbolt. are disabled.
USB Port, Ultrabay (will get a caddy and add. SSD soon), memory card/smart card slot (cover USBsticks too !) and Expresscard slot are ENABLED.

I have no clue about the anti theft s##t though,- p.ex. the "Security Chip" has the option to be en- or disabled.
I leaved it on and deactivated the bells and whistles instead.

i use system information-hardware resources-conflicts/sharing to find any usb controllers sharing an irq with the cards. then i disable any controller i find sharing with the card in the device manager.

Yup !

And I agree to all the below !
Thx for all your help and advise !

B.t.w.,- I doubt I´ll record many tracks.
Instead, I´ll use the laptop to control SCOPE/XITE running standalone mostly, using few SCOPE synths, as FX processor and mixer for my hardware w( S|C A16U connected to ZLink.
Maybe a handful or less VSTi in addition and together w/ a humble and CPU friendly host,- possibly Reaper.

I´ll leave the XITE- PCIe card in my 4HU Z97 DAW machine to connect XITE on demand and for the higher track counts etc..

I´ll report back when I have SCOPE/XITE 7.0 installed ...
Well, I waited in the hope to download v7.1 very soon,- but might be too optimistic ...



Bud

[valis]

For network level stuff Intel, Realtek & Broadcom are all decent these days, the latter are more PIO mode drive (software driven and more of a load on the host) than Intel but it's negligable in this era. Companies like Killer repackage Realtek & Intel with their own QoS software stack on top, which sucks. If you wind up with that stack, use the uninstaller you can download directly from Killer's website to remove everything and untick their management software during install. Then it's basically just a repackaged driver & all is good. Fwiw on a modern system I don't have issues with W-Lan either, though you don't want to have it scanning so manually enabling & disabling is key.

Thunderbolt can remain enabled, as can Bluetooth. Bluetooth is kind of useful now as well, Macs have had midi standard there for a bit but on Win you now have MOTU making "Widi" adapters that can directly connect to BT for midi.

Depends on what you're going to do really, but as Gary has stated you don't need to do nearly as much to machines these days. In fact with Scope 7 I didn't even have to do as much to an XP era machine as I used to, and performance seems more consistent across Scope sessions.

[garyb]

the power settings(usb selective suspend, PCIe power and cpu levels) are in the advanced power settings in Windows.

[Bud Weiser]

Hi Gary & Valis !

Thanks a lot for great advise !

Skype and On-Drive is gone and I don´t use W-LAN as long I´m in house where I prefer ethernet cable because of privacy.
But good to now I can use when necessary, BT and TB too !

When I have SCOPE 7 installed I´ll come back w/ results and, possibly, screebshots too.

good to be here and talkin´ to you guys !



Bud

[valis]

Glad to help, and as always I defer to Gary B for support related topics. Note that with Bluetooth it’s enough to simply disable it when it’s not in use, which you can now do on PC as well as Mac with the task tray icon. And thunderbolt should not do anything if it’s not connected to a device, so if you see issues there that will be related to how the device is using the thunderbolt port rather than the thunderbolt controller on the other side of the Connection.