Windows 10 May 2019 Update (Build 1903)

Games, Gaming & Hardware
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Hi, I hope this is the right forum to post something like this. I’m really only using the WoW forums, so I don’t bother asking on a PC-forum.

After I installed the last build update via Windows Update I’ve been getting sound pops, crackles, drop-outs etc when watching YouTube or just listening to Spotify. The RAM usage in Windows also has gone up from around 4 GB on idle to 14 GB after 24h uptime (I have 16 GB total). The computer seems fine when it is newly booted, but after a day or so idling it’s bad again.

I downloaded some testing tools for DPC Latency (DPC Latency Checker and Latencymon) and they indeed show high spikes of latency, averaging around 1000 microsec on idle and newly booted system. When I get the high spikes with sound cracks and pops it can range all the way from 16k microsecs to 50k microsecs.

Latencymon also reports the driver or service that reports the highest latency and it’s the NT kernel itself. I read something similar happening to people on reddit and that they didn’t have a solution yet.

Does anyone have a clue for a possible solution to this? I really hope Microsoft engineers roll out a patch soon, as I don’t wanna reboot my system everyday. It was working fine before the update. I guess in the worst scenario I just have to roll back to last build (October 2018 Update ver. 1809). I’ve checked that all my drivers are up to date, I’ve updated my BIOS to latest version, pegged down all overclocks to stock values etc.

Thanks for all inputs!

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You probably already have, but i would recommend checking the Windows Event Viewer logbooks. There might be a massive load of errors being reported there, that may (or may not) point you in the direction of a solution.

That said though, much of the general public has had a very rocky experience with all the 2018/2019 feature updates from Microsoft. Enough so, that i personally don’t even consider testing them until some months after general release, let alone installing it for real on my workstation.

Yea, there most likely isn’t a whole lot else you yourself can do about it, other than checking the event viewer, or shrinking the possible problem area by unplugging as many things as possible (eg: if the source of the problem is incompatibilities with your usb printer driver then not having a printer plugged in could “help”).

Just because your drivers are up to date, does not necessarily mean they aren’t causing the problem, as there may simply not be an update released yet to make it compatible with the new windows version. But that’s only relevant for assigning blame, it doesn’t help you get a working system.

That would be my recommendation, even knowing how much of a pita it can be. Personally i use backups for this instead of the build-in previous version roll back, but i think that one should be fine too.

Personally, i plan to wait until likely mid to late August before giving it a first try (and then depending on the result, either stick with it, or revert & wait even longer). Each his own of course. I’d be slightly curious what all the sysadmins around here (there must be quite a bunch of them) think about the latest feature update, those who have had to test and deploy it on a variety of systems.

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Thanks for a very thorough and understanding reply!
Yeah I should really stop jumping the gun so fast when it comes to feature updates, especially for an OS. Not the first time I’ve burned myself here, updates for Windows, MacOS and iOS has given me troubles in the past. :sweat_smile:

I’ve just done a clean reinstall of the newest Nvidia graphics driver using DDU, but that didn’t seem to impact the situation too much. I’ll keep an eye out for errors in event viewer and try to unplug USB devices one at a time and see if anything at all happens.

Yeah I haven’t really had too great of a success in the past with automated repair services or roll back features in Windows, they always seem to fail no matter what. But if I can’t get my situation sorted out asap or Microsoft rolls out a patch, that will be my last resort (eventually in combination with reformating Windows aswell, fresh start).

Yeah this update really has to be some sysadmin’s pita for sure. It’s an issue which probably most people evade, but a lot of people still get this kinds of troubles with the Win10 feature updates. The May 2019 Update (ver. 1903) isn’t the first one with DPC latency issues aswell, I see according to other forums and subreddits that the October 2018 Update (ver. 1809) was also a pita when it came out, but that probably got sorted after a while.

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Yea, the last 3 in recent memory were all hellish for a big percentage of early adopters. And in 2 of those cases myself as well. Thats the main reason i’m not touching it for a few more months this time.

Good luck though, i hope you can figure out the cause, and that it is something small that you can work around.

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UPDATE: I rolled back the May 2019 Update (Build 1903) to the previous one (October 2018 Update, Build 1809). The issue seems to have resolved itself and the latency is back to fine/green values. I’ll update this thread further after 24h uptime on the system. So as a warning to other people, you might want to wait a while before installing the newest feature update for Windows, to avoid troubles like this.

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Nice save :slight_smile:

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Personally, I’ve had no issues with the latest Windows roll-out; that said I’m using an RX Vega 56… still only seeing ~5GB (of 32) RAM used w/ a 3-tab Chrome session running.

GL getting to the root of it.

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Hi! Yeah I’ve been struggling the last couple of days trying to get this sorted out. It got better on rollback, but still after 12h+ uptime the audio would spike and mousepointer freeze. LatencyMon kicked on ndis.sys (Network Driver Interface Specification), showing it spiking all over the place when the audio started crackling. The rollback of the Windows feature update got my RAM usage back to normal though!

I’ve tried a bunch of old official drivers from both ASUS (Sabertooth Z77 Desktop Motherboard) and straight from Intel (Intel Gigabit Ethernet Driver) for the Intel onboard LAN itself. With very different results, I found the older driver I used the higher the spikes were and the longer the freezes were. The drivers supported all the way from XP to Win 8.1, so no official Win10 support.

At this time I have disabled the onboard LAN in BIOS completely and running a dedicated PCI-E WIFI-card from ASUS I had lying around. Seems to be good atm, but I will see after the computer has some uptime on it. This is also by no means a permanent solution as I’m only able to utilize 10% of my internet lines speed via WIFI compared to cat6. I also tried another SSD I had lying around with a different Windows 10 install on it and I got the same stutterings. So I don’t know what to think just right now, I guess everything points to hardware and maybe a motherboard on its way out. It’s been serving me good 24/7 for 7 years now though, so it’s been good all the way up until now.

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Worst case scenario could be that your Z77 mainboard may have interference leaks from the on-board audio/network circuitry… bear in mind that Z77 is a good few years old and may be telling you that it’s ripe for an upgrade… :frowning:

FTR - Z77… (Z87?)… Z97… Z170… Z270… Z370…

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Yeah for sure, the Z77 is a good 5-6 generations old by now. But it’s been working great running 24/7 for all those years. So I guess it’s allowed to retire soon. :grin:

I will keep it alive atleast until the Ryzen 3000 series launches together with the X570 mobo’s. First time I’m actually seriously considering AMD. Seems like a great time to be thinking about a rig upgrade.

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It’s not the z77.

It can’t be because I’ve done the install of the latest version multiple times. One time it’s fine throughout, then I install another driver and poof, the problem is present. A driver that is well not related directly but obviously through some timing mechanism(Intel Network for an example). And yeah.

I’m going to revert it tonight as well, as I also thought it was because of my audio interface. I have like 3. So I was messing around with drivers but now that I’ve read about 7 forums at this point and the problem is widespread with 1903. I’m rolling back to 1809 too.

Pity they don’t let you download it with a Windows machine so I grabbed it on my Oracle linux install at work instead…

The point: They really are letting their userbase do the beta testing which is quite frankly, stupid AF.

But then again, free new stuff every half a year… I guess. And it costs nothing extra, other than your data and your soul :>

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