All of our HP ProBook 440 / 540 G8 laptops experiencing lagging / slow / stuttering as of April 2022

[FrankOH]

We have about 10 HP ProBook 440 / 450 G8 laptops, and as of about 4/20/22, they have all started experiencing major slowdowns in operation, symptoms including, but not limited to, stuttering trackpads / mouse operations, programs running drastically slow, overall computer operation is very slow / laggy.

What we've done so far:

- Ran HP Image Assistant to update drivers and BIOS / no luck

- Ran all Windows 10 updates, which was difficult to do with the slowdown / no luck

- We did not run the bootup hardware diagnostics because I can't see a hardware failure with all 10 of them at the same time

- I'm assumig it has to be a Windows update or HP update that happened in the last few weeks

The only other thing I've noticed is when I look in the Event Viewer on these machines, there are a LOT of these types of messages for the past few days:

- Critial Error - AppModel-Runtime - 0x3D55: Package family MICROSOFT.XBOXAPP_?????????? runtime information is corrupted. Attempting to correct the issue.

I see that on almost all the affected machines ... not sure if it's connected or not.  Many lines with different apps listed... this one says XBOXAPP, another says YOURPHONE, others show different apps.

Is anyone else experiencing this, or does anyone have a solution?

Thanks.

[CraigPDP]

Had the same issue recently with multiple G8’s with 8GB RAM but without the event viewer message. Noticed slowness happened after a couple of hours where memory was maxing towards 100%, restart temporarily resolved issue until memory maxed again. Also noticed that multiple driver updates had just been applied prior. Fixed issue by temporarily allowing user local admin rights. Surmise that one of the drivers needed local admin rights to install properly. 16Gb ram not affected but maybe down to more resource available before end of day reboot. Be good to get feedback from other users to find out if driver updates were the root cause & which driver it may be. 

[CeressiaF]

Hello,

Exactly the same problem with my 450 G8 HP laptop.

Had problem with 3 of them - after pushing latest updates (Win + Bios) those computer beginning to consume all available memory and when no more memory left they begin to suffer from Crash, slowness, ... until reboot ...

Hope HP will find the problem and offer a quick solution !!

[DeiWee]

In our company already 10 computer have same problem. We will try to test with NDU disabling in register:

Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Services\Ndu
Start = 4 (for disabling)

And let you know if it solved a problem.

[FrankOH]

CraigPDP and CeressiaF, thanks for mentioning that ... I completely forgot the first laptop we worked on with this the memory was at 99-100% usage. I didn't look at the rest, but assume it to be the same.  Was in panic mode trying to get these fixed for people. So, your memory comment is the same for us.

[FrankOH]

So, just following up a few days later ... since we have not been able to come up with a simple / quick solution to this, our first 'test' user/laptop we ended up taking the hour or so to upgrade from Win10 to Win11.  He hasn't had any problems since doing that, over the last 24 hours.  Until we find an easier solution, we'll just start upgrading the affected people to Win11 so they can actually do their work without being bogged down by terrible machine performance.

[TzortzisG]

FrankOH, did you try disabling the NDU? Sometimes it works....

Also check similar thread:

https://h30434.www3.hp.com/t5/Business-Notebooks/HP-ProBook-450-G8-Notebook-PC-run-very-very-slowly/...

[FrankOH]

I did not try that because I wasn't sure what the NDU was, and the first reference I found to it when I Google'd it was this:

"I did a google search on this registry edit. Note that there may be some unintended consequences of turning of the NDU utility in the registry: Here’s an article I found that can save memory usage over time but it can cause problems with the pc detecting new usb devices (yes an odd combination of things but that windows I guess).

NDU is a driver that helps the operating system communicate with the computer’s internal hardware. It detects new devices. For example, NDU helps the OS communicate with the USB ports to detect any connected USB devices."

I did not want to lose or alter that computer ability, so I did not try that.  However, after researching more on NDU, that first result may have been incorrect. It may have nothing to do with that as other articles I found say it's the Network Diagnostic Utility.

So no, I didn't try that.  However, I will read the other link you provided and possibly attempt it on one of the other affected computers.

Thanks.

[TzortzisG]

You can always change it back easily (the same way you altered it in the first place 4->2), so no worries FrankOH.....

[FrankOH]

I'm going to disable it on my computer first (I don't have the memory leak problem) and see if it affects any USB activities.  If not, we'll try it on the affected computers.

Thanks for the info!  Have a good day!