[RESOLVED] Strange PC stuttering / polling issue - help needed please

Gully Foyle

Gully Foyle
Gorn!
Glad you got it sorted out Para.
I would let the manufacturer of your NAS know about the situation you had with that specific model and the update of windows.
 

Para Handy

Para Handy
GJ51 said:
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Is your NAS on a switch or direct to PC?
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Yes it sits on a port on my hub - not direct to the PC. I don't allow any WD stuff to run at startup (it is a WD "My Cloud" device) - of course as it is a network device that is seen by any PC on the network all the time it is powered and connected. My secondary PC and laptop both showed stuttering, now gone (they don't have USB flight controls attached to show the flashing).
 

Bravo17

B
Para Handy said:
I don't know a way of flagging this up to micro$oft - any suggestions on that?
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I would suggest logging it with the NAS manufacturer, they should either be able to fix it if it is an issue with their software, or flag it to MS if it is a more general issue.

OK late to the party I see.

WD did just let me know about an update to MYCloud.
 
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GJ51

GJ51
Para Handy said:
Yes it sits on a port on my hub - not direct to the PC. I don't allow any WD stuff to run at startup (it is a WD "My Cloud" device) - of course as it is a network device that is seen by any PC on the network all the time it is powered and connected. My secondary PC and laptop both showed stuttering, now gone (they don't have USB flight controls attached to show the flashing).
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I guess what I'm asking is if it can be connected to an ethernet port perhaps on a router/switch rather than USB.
 

Para Handy

Para Handy
GJ51 said:
I guess what I'm asking is if it can be connected to an ethernet port perhaps on a router/switch rather than USB.
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That is what I said, I wasn't too clear though. It is on the ethernet local area network that is what I meant by it sits on a port on my hub - not direct to the PC - it is not a USB connection but a Cat 6 cable to an RJ-45 port on my hub. (I might try it connected to a port on one of the net switch boxes on my network at some point.) The issue is not caused by a USB device, it seems to be the issue of explorer.exe (or something) polling devices - so my flight control multi box and radio box get polled twice a minute and their displays light up at that - that is what alerted me to the issue befrore I even noticed the stuttering in the game.

What interests me is why the box display flashing only happens when I am playing Elite or a Steam-based game - it doesn't happen with other games nor when there is no game running. Sure the Device Manager is still being polled but the flight sim control boxes' displays don't flash unless I am playing Elite or have Steam running. Weird.
 

Para Handy

Para Handy
Bravo17 said:
I would suggest logging it with the NAS manufacturer, they should either be able to fix it if it is an issue with their software, or flag it to MS if it is a more general issue.

OK late to the party I see.

WD did just let me know about an update to MYCloud.
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Hmm ... I am loath to mess with WDs updates, havng been bitten once before. I can't remember the last time I ran the "My Cloud" program - I might give it a try over the weekend. Thanks for the info there.
 

yianniv

yianniv
Para Handy said:
That is what I said, I wasn't too clear though. It is on the ethernet local area network that is what I meant by it sits on a port on my hub - not direct to the PC - it is not a USB connection but a Cat 6 cable to an RJ-45 port on my hub. (I might try it connected to a port on one of the net switch boxes on my network at some point.) The issue is not caused by a USB device, it seems to be the issue of explorer.exe (or something) polling devices - so my flight control multi box and radio box get polled twice a minute and their displays light up at that - that is what alerted me to the issue befrore I even noticed the stuttering in the game.

What interests me is why the box display flashing only happens when I am playing Elite or a Steam-based game - it doesn't happen with other games nor when there is no game running. Sure the Device Manager is still being polled but the flight sim control boxes' displays don't flash unless I am playing Elite or have Steam running. Weird.
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Maybe a WD service for auto backup is active? it could be monitoring the Elite log folder for changes. Also, I hope you call your network a "hub" out of habit. If it's not a switch (I know the chances are extremely low but I noticed the word) throw it away and get a switch.
Edit: there is a windows program called Resource Monitor (type resmon in the start menu) which can show you network and other activity. You can try and isolate the process that writes/reads to the WD ip address.

There is also procmon from ex-sysinternals-and-now-microsoft (look it up, the whole sysinternals suite is fantastic).
 
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Para Handy

Para Handy
yianniv said:
Maybe a WD service for auto backup is active? it could be monitoring the Elite log folder for changes. Also, I hope you call your network a "hub" out of habit. If it's not a switch (I know the chances are extremely low but I noticed the word) throw it away and get a switch.
Edit: there is a windows program called Resource Monitor (type resmon in the start menu) which can show you network and other activity. You can try and isolate the process that writes/reads to the WD ip address.

There is also procmon from ex-sysinternals-and-now-microsoft (look it up, the whole sysinternals suite is fantastic).
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1. No - there is no WD service working at all. I did mention that I had scoured the registry as well as monitoring the processes (as in my second video) so no, nothing.

2. I said HUB and I meant HUB - my BT "Smart Hub" has several RJ-45 connectors, one of which the NAS was attached to. I have 3 switches on the network.

3. Of course you are not to know that I was originally an electronics engineer and have very extensive (albeit not up-to-this-minute) experience of computer systems. I can assure you that I spent an age monitoring what was going on before considering writing the OP. I was kind of hoping that someone else might have noticed a behaviour change after a windows update but obviously not. Unfortunately some people got side-tracked by my mention of USB polling - the USB matter is a symptom, not a cause.

4. I didn't want to get bogged-down in resource logs - I hated that in the past - but thanks for reminding me about procmon.
 

Esteban

E
Glad to hear that you have identified the cause of the problem. I must say that I'd also be hesitant to mess with WD updates and/or the "MyCloud" stuff, opting rather to wait (at least for a while) to see if a fix comes from the Redmond end of things. This, especially considering how much digging and snooping of everything you've likely gone thru over the last who-knows-how-long and considering that it is a known OS issue, so why mess with... Well, you know. I'll stop there.
Whew! Give yourself a break.
 

Bravo17

B
Does the MyCloud drive work OK? I have one at work that works fine, but the one at home started taking forever to access files so I gave up with it. Could the drive itself be playing up and periodically causing a refresh of all the devices on the system by going offline and then coming back on again?
 

Para Handy

Para Handy
Bravo17 said:
Does the MyCloud drive work OK? I have one at work that works fine, but the one at home started taking forever to access files so I gave up with it. Could the drive itself be playing up and periodically causing a refresh of all the devices on the system by going offline and then coming back on again?
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Yes the drive works fine as a NAS. - The "My Cloud" side of things is basically a kind of FTP server that works via IP addresses and password protection - I have that disabled (no need for remote access any more) and so I think it is entirely separate from the NAS function.
 

Para Handy

Para Handy
I just thought I'd wrap this up with a bit more info.

"For Science" - (well, OK really to get my NAS back working as it is my music server) - I decided to further investigate this issue. On restarting and reconnecting the NAS I found that the stuttering and polling did not re-appear (so nor did the flight panels flashing). Intrigued, I delved a bit further and discovered that the network address of my NAS was now different to what it was previously. The NAS is working fine on the LAN so I am assuming that what was happening before may have been a conflict in addresses on the LAN.

I further rolled the dice and updated the NAS firmware (with fingers crossed) and still everything works fine. Unfortunately I also let the "WD MyCloud" app update itself and now that is knackered - seems to have forgotten the user (me) and can't accept a user name. I can still access "remotely" via a browser so the device is working fine, just the stupid app that is knackered. Since I don't use it I am just going to ignore it but this is why I was hesitant to do any WD "updates". ;)
 
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