Specre x360 15 performance issues after BIOS update

[Rashid-C]

A couple of days ago my computer's BIOS updated. Since then the system has experienced periodic slowdown.

The first time I noticed this (which might not be the first time it occurred,) I checked Task Manager and found that "HP Support Assistant" was taking around 50% of the cpu (or maybe it was the "HP Support Solutions Framework Service" process, I forget which.) However since then I have not seen any processes taking an abnormal amount of cpu, although the slowdown generally stops by the time Task Manager pops up.

As an example, after physically typing the "Spectre x360" in the title of this post, it took about 10 seconds for the letters to actually appear. Things sped up later in the post, but there have been multiple waves of slowdown while writing this. The only user-apps running I'm aware of are Chrome (very few tabs open), my mail client (Thunderbird), and a trial virus protector (Kaspersky).

I did notice this post , which discusses the "HP Support Assistant" taking up cpu on earlier models. Although I am not certain if HPSA is the culprit. HPSA does state that I am fully up-to-date. 

I did not experience any of these issues prior to the BIOS update. When typing "wmic bios get biosversion" into a command prompt, it states that my BIOS version is:

{"HPQOEM - 1072009", "F.04", "American Megatrends - 5000C"}

As part of the BIOS installation process, a backup was placed onto a usb stick. Although I don't know if the backup is the old bios or the new one. The files on the usb stick have "082C1" in their name.

I'll try some things to test if it's the same issue as reported in the linked-to thread. But if it turns out to not be due to HPSA, perhaps I should try rolling back the BIOS? I could also try turning off my virus protection and mail client.

Woefully sluggish,

 - Rashid

[Chimney_83]

Greetings @Rashid-C, 

Welcome to HP Forums and Thanks for the post. 

I understand that you are facing an issue with your computer's performance after updating the BIOS on your computer. 

Don't worry, I will be glad to help. 

Kudos to you for trying to troubleshoot the issue on your own.

Have you run a system test on your computer?

Recommend you to run a system test on your computer. Please follow the procedure mentioned below. Click here for the HP Article. 

Turn the computer Off. 

Turn the computer On and keep tapping F2 or ESC repeatedly on startup. 

This should get you to a Startup Menu and from there you can select System Diagnostics. 

Please select system diagnostics and run a system test. 

If the test fails, please contact our phone support for the service options.

If the test passes. Please exit system diagnostics.

Turn off the computer. 

While holding Win + B turn the computer ON. 

This would rollback the BIOS on your computer to the previous version installed on your computer. 

Refer to this HP Article for assistance. 

For other troubleshooting steps, please refer to this HP Article. 

Please follow the procedure mentioned below to contact our phone support. 

• Open link:  www.hp.com/contacthp/
• Enter Product number or select to auto detect
• Scroll down to "Still need help? Complete the form to select your contact options"
• Scroll down and click on HP contact options - click on Get phone number.

Let me know if this helped. 

If the information I've provided was helpful,

Please give us some reinforcement by clicking the "Accepted Solution" and "Kudos" buttons,

That’ll help us and others see that we’ve got the answers!

Good Luck.

[Rashid-C]

Thank you for the helpful information. I've tried a few things, including:

• I followed your suggestion and ran a "System extensive test". This passed.
  While I was in the startup menu, I went ahead and also ran the following component tests, all of which passed: processor, memory extensive test, system board, and video memory.
• I also followed your suggestion and rolled back the BIOS.
• I followed some of the suggestions on the "HP PCs - Computer Is Slow" link you had provided: Running the System file Checker revealed that various, system sound files were corrupt (played for notification, alerts, etc.) So I ran dism.exe to repair them.

The performance issue still reproduced.

So I then tried switching browsers (from Chrome to Firefox), and I disabled my virus protection software.

The issue still reproduced.

One of the problems I've been having is that sometime the issue would not reproduce for some time, before finally rearing its head. But earlier today I think I found a reliable way to reproduce: Typing into a browser for an extended period of time.

  SO. Armed with that, I tried opening up a page with a long text-entry widget: Live Journal (anyone remember that site?) I left the Task Manager open, sorted by %CPU, and typed away. After a while, the issue started repeating often. And in every case, this paired with the "System" process jumping to the top of the %CPU list, typically in the low 30 percentile range. I could do things to get other processes to go higher than that, but they do not pair with the performance issue reproducing. Only "System" does that.

  I therefore tried some of the solutions mentioned in this link. Specifically, I disabled "windows search service", and from the command prompt I also ran "Dism /Online /Cleanup-Image /RestoreHealth". I don't know which of those was responsible, but I tried another browser-typing test and didn't reproduce the error.

  HOWEVER. Just now, after typing that last sentence, "System" jumped in % cpu and the performance issue reproduced. 

   It's getting late for me, so I'll look into things again later in the week.

  Thank you again for your help.

[Chimney_83]

Thanks for the reply and trying the suggested steps. 

Kudos to you for trying to research the issue and finding alternatives. 

Try performing the push button reset on your computer and check if it resolves the issue. Please refer to this HP Article for assistance. 

If the issue persists only while using any browsers. You can reset Internet options from the control panel and check. 

Open control panel by doing a right-click on the Windows button.

Select view by category and change it to small or large icons (You will find this option on the top-right side of the control panel window)

Select internet options.

On the internet options window, on the top right-side click on advanced. 

On the advanced tab, towards the bottom, you will have an option to reset.

Please click on reset, refer to Step 4 in this HP article and follow the procedure under 9 in Step 4.

There are other troubleshooting steps as well mentioned in the Article. 

Keep me posted. 

If the information I've provided was helpful,

Please give us some reinforcement by clicking the "Accepted Solution" and "Kudos" buttons,

That’ll help us and others see that we’ve got the answers!

Good Luck.

[Rashid-C]

I've posted a response twice now, and each time it hasn't shown up in this thread.

Perhaps it's because it was a long post, which included images. I'll try breaking it up into smaller posts, and convert the images into external links.

More to come...

[Rashid-C]

  Thank you for the advice. I tried some of it as well as other investigations, the results of which are listed in the post which follows this one.

  I should also clarify some of the symptoms. Although my use cases involve browsers, I think that's just because I mainly use browsers for my current projects. When a performance issue happens, it effects the entire system: Any music player running (I've tried two different players) will stutter, I can't switch windows nor bring up the start menu, and in severe cases the mouse also freezes for the duration of the performance lag. These lags can last anywhere from a half a second to 10 seconds or so.

   The time I reported that typing into a browser was a reliable way to reproduce the issue turns out to not be true. I haven't been able to reliably use that technique since then. The issue seems to be more unpredictable. I wouldn't be surprised if the issue existed from day 1, and I just had not noticed it for the first couple of days of owning the laptop because that time was spent installing applications etc.

A lot of sites mention that the "system" process using a lot of cpu is a sign of a driver having a memory leak.

[Rashid-C]

This "2 of 3" post failed to show up the first time I posted it. i think it may have been due to a link I provided, so I'll omit the link this time.

----

Here are some things I've tried since the previous post, none of which addressed the issue:

1) I set the ClearPageFileAtShutDown regkey to 1, as suggested by on online source. (Link omitted, see comment above.)
2)I disabled everything in settings->devices->typing, except for the "touch keyboard" options.
3) In settings->system->notifications, I disabled windows tips, candy crush, cortana, math input, and onedrive.
4) The link you had provided for Push-Button Reset recommended that I use HP Recovery Manager instead, due to the size of my drive. Recovery Manager was used to re-install all drivers it listed. I only did the drivers, not the entire OS, due the the System process often being related to driver issues.
5) The only piece of hardware I regularly have connected which didn't come with the machine is a usb mouse. Not being willing to give up a mouse, I tried selecting the setting, "Disable internal pointing device when external USB pointing device is attached", just in case it was conflicting with the touch pad. The mouse is listed in Device Manager as a "HID-compliant mouse", and was purchased from HP's site. For the record I also plug headphones into the audio jack, and maybe once a week attach an exteral usb drive for making backups.
6) Disabled my virus protection's Chrome extension.
7) I reset internet options from the OS' settings, as suggested. However that setting is labeled as "Reset Internet Explorer Settings", and I generally use Chrome. I'll try clearing my browser's cache etc today as recommended, but these issues came up soon after my computer arrived (if not on day 1), and on both Chrome and Firefox, so I don't suspect that it will help. But you never know.

[Rashid-C]

  Some interesting results were found by following the advice on this site by running xperf and WPA. This morning I managed to start a trace right in the middle of a performace loss, which wasn't easy to do as the whole computer was frozen during most of that loss, but there was a small enough window of opportunity in the middle of it all to get the trace running. Here are a couple of screenshots of the results.
  This first WPA screenshot is of the sampled CPU usage, where I've expanded the process which takes up the most computation, "System". There looks to be a lot of nested "dxgmms2.sys", "igdkmd64.sys", and one "hal.dll".

Cpu graph image link 1

"dxgmms2.sys" seems to be related to a graphics driver, as explained by an online resource (link omitted for reasons explained in "part 2" post above.) That post suggests an incompatibility between the version of the nvidia driver used and the version of win10 used. Other threads on the HP forum show other users having issues with this process. As suggested in that HP thread, I tried updating the Nvidia driver about an hour ago, using version 378.78 from Nvidia's site (released this month.) The problem is still reproducing, however.

For "igdkmd64.sys", this site also suggests that it is a conflict between the video driver and windows. They recommend going into the BIOS settings and disabling the cpu's onboard graphics (since the machine has a discreet card.) I haven't looked into that yet to see if it's an option.

And "hal.dll" is the Hardware Abstraction Layer. Not the 2001 computer as I was hoping it to be.

For reference, here's a screenshot of another cpu graph for the same time period as the screenshot above. "System" is shown going beyong the capabilities of the machine:

CPU graph image link 2

[Chimney_83 · Accepted solution]

Thanks for the reply and providing more information.

Kudos to you for doing so much research on your own and updating the graphics driver from Nvidia website. 

You can also Enable 'Use software rendering instead of GPU rendering' option in Internet Explorer.

Follow the procedure below. 

Right-click on the Windows button. Open Control Panel.

On the top right side of the control panel, you have an option to change view by small icons/large icons

Select  Internet Options.

On the Advanced tab, locate the Accelerated graphics section.

Ensure the Use software rendering instead of GPU rendering check box is selected. If not click the check box

Click Apply, and then click OK.

Close Internet Explorer and then restart it so that the change takes effect.

Please follow the procedure mentioned under "Performing a push-button reset through Settings" in this article. 

If the issue persists, please reinstall the OS after backing up your data using Recovery manager. 

Check under "Performing system recovery" in this article.

If the issue persists, please contact our phone support for the service options. 

Please follow the procedure mentioned below to contact our phone support. 

• Open link:  www.hp.com/contacthp/
• Enter Product number or select to auto detect
• Scroll down to "Still need help? Complete the form to select your contact options"
• Scroll down and click on HP contact options - click on Get phone number.

Keep me posted. 

If the information I've provided was helpful,

Please give us some reinforcement by clicking the "Accepted Solution" and "Kudos" buttons,

That’ll help us and others see that we’ve got the answers!

Please do post your technical queries on our Forums for assistance. 

Good Luck.

[Rashid-C]

Sorry I haven't been able to look into this further, it's been a busy week. I should have some time next week.