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Thread: Mouse movement causing huge CPU usage spikes

  1. #1
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    Mouse movement causing huge CPU usage spikes

    I've had this problem for quite a while now and it generally only happens after a few hours of uptime (quite expected after 24 hours but can occur when it wants to, and I may go long stretches without it), the mouse causes massive increases in CPU usage which results in everything lagging. Audio is the easiest to notice and continuous mouse movement will nearly stop it completely. Playing games is out of the question unless you are a masochist.

    I've tried reinstalling the mouse, changing USB port and a bunch of other things which do not involve restarting the PC (If I restart I have no way to tell if it has gone completely or will reappear 10 hours later). My first misguided attempt to address the problem was to buy a new sound card as I thought that was initially to blame, but a moment of clarity and complete unwillingness to restart my PC have finally driven me to fix this properly.

    It can occur during a game or even just sitting on desktop and will persist until a reboot. It has been happening for at least a year and I generally just reboot rather than actually solve the issue but it is really starting to irritate me.


    System specs:
    -Core i5 750 (not overclocked at the moment)
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    -ATI HD5850
    -8gb 1600 DDR3 Corsair XMS3
    -Creative Soundcard (I think it is extreme audio or gaming, it was a display version or something so I didn't get a box and I cannot find a way to tell)
    -Various HDD's
    -Microsoft Habu mouse

    Here is a screenshot which shows the effect of moving the mouse in a figure of eight pattern on the desktop for a short while:





    The CPU increase is generally pegged on to whatever the mouse is moving over e.g. explorer.exe, taskmgr.exe

    Anyone have any clues?

    Edit: It has survived through several reformats

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    Re: Mouse movement causing huge CPU usage spikes

    My thoughts are deferred procedure call (dpc) latency. You can use this program to check it:
    http://www.thesycon.de/deu/latency_check.shtml

    The causes are can be many, so it doesn't help much. You've ruled out drivers, so remaining causes could be flaky hardware, overheating or power saving modes etc.

    First I'd try changing the mouse, which seems the obvious experiment If that doesn't work, clear the CMOS to reset your BIOS to default settings. If that doesn't help, update the BIOS. Check chipset cooling is fine (correct heatsink contact etc), check motherboard isn't shorting anywhere obvious, check cables to the front panel.

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