First off I would like to say that I love this application. The wallpaper feature alone is worth the cost, but all the other features make this an incredible product.

Now, exactly every 60 seconds my CPU spikes to about 7-13%. After a while of noticing this, I tracked it via process monitor and found it was displayfusion.exe. Now normally a 7-13% spike isn't so bad, but when it does so, my entire system either lags or completely locks up for about half a second to a full second. Now that isn't necessarily world shattering, but when I am playing a game or watching a movie, it sort of ruins that process (games in particular, I cant play with it running). First off, my windows 7 ultimate x64 and my display drivers are up to date. I have tried disabling application hooks, titlebar buttons, and wallpapers. None of these changed the situation. I am not using multi-monitor taskbars. I tried forcing it to use all CPUs (in advanced options), but it did not fix anything. I tried enabling logging to see what it was doing during that time, but its impossible to weed out what is and is not legit. It will happen exactly the same second mark on every minute. That second mark is determined by when the application is launched, or when I change a setting and click apply. So lets say I start the application (or apply a change) at 17:00:20. The spike will occur at 17:01:20, 17:02:20, 17:03:20, etc, etc. If I relaunch at a different time, it will start every 60 seconds from that moment instead. This has been going on for quite a while now. I noticed there were some performance enhancements in 7.2beta4, so I tried updating to that version, but that did not fix the issue either. Is there something displayfusion.exe does every 60 seconds specifically? I hate having to stop the program every time I want to play a game or watch a movie.

Actually it might be closer to 1-2 seconds. I am attaching a file called DisplayFusion_3_spikes.log, where it occured around 20:00:16, 20:01:16 and 20:02:16 and ended at the 18 second mark for each one.

Thanks, I did turn it back to L1 after collecting the information, I just wanted to provide as much information as possible.

Attached requested file.

Yes, if you read my original message I tried turning off Titlebar buttons. I also tried disabling Application Hooks and I have the application using all CPU cores. My wallpaper rotation is set to 1 hour, and even when I disabled that, the issue was still occuring.

Its never using a lot of CPU, just causing my system to hang for a second or two every minute. Is there something specfic it does once a minute?

I never saw an update for beta 6 but I see that beta 7 was posted. Was the debug version made for beta 6?

I apologize for not getting back sooner, my life has been hectic recently. Anyway, I am happy to report that after long term testing, this version of display fusion, with the timer turned off, does NOT spike my CPU every minute. So whatever was turned off is what was causing the issue. I have attached an L3 log for about 5 minutes worth of data, I don't know if it will be helpful, but yes, whatever that timer is doing, is causing the problem.

I should also add, there is one other time when it locks up my PC (even this version), but its not at a timed interval. That is when I apply settings. Even something as small as changing the log level from 1 to 0, or 1 to 2 and hitting apply causes the system to lag tremendously for about a second. This happens when I make any change and hit apply/ok. I can only wonder if the timed event is doing something similar, just on a smaller scale perhaps? or maybe on the same scale even.

I have this same issue, and I tried installing the no-timer beta posted above, which fixed it - HOWEVER, now every 2-3 seconds my mouse cursor switches briefly to the "working in background" pointer and back again. Odd, and slightly distracting. I tried installing the most recent 7.3 beta 2 instead, and started experiencing the 60-second spike causing system stuttering all over again.

My current workaround is to use the no-timer beta above, and I changed the "working in the background" pointer to be the same as the regular one.

EDIT: I've noticed the app hook process crashes immediately, and window snapping/mouse wrapping no longer work at all. Tried disabling app hooks and restarting, then re-enabling and restarting, and no change. This only happens with the no-timer beta above, 7.2 and 7.3 beta 2 worked fine for hooks but still exhibited the 60-second cpu spike and system slowdown.

EDIT AGAIN: Here's an interesting twist - I fully uninstalled everything and installed the 7.3 beta 2 from scratch, then setup my configuration just how I want it. 60-second slowdown happened like clockwork. THEN, I killed the "DisplayFusion.exe" process in Task Manager, but didn't use "kill process tree". The two hook processes stuck around, and now mouse-wrapping works fine but window-snapping seems not to, and no slowdowns.

I did those steps, and still experienced the stuttering. Logs attached.

When you apply settings, does it lock up for a good 1-2 seconds?

Yes; that's not an issue or in any way related to this, that's just "software doing its thing".

Yea but I get the impression its the same underlying issue. As in, whatever is happening every 60 seconds is probably applying some update. Using the same process to do that which then locks up the system.

I upgraded to it, but its still occurring. Its a bit less intense than before, but its still there. I basically have to shut it down if I want to play games or when I am working, which is really annoying.

Same here, it is still occurring in 7.3 final, with or without the nVidia check disabled.

Sure, I'm happy to try them out.

Same

Any further news on this? Its very annoying to have to close it out when I need to work or play games.

Agreed. I too would be happy to help troubleshoot more. I am also an nvidia user and the CPU out of control issue having to kill off DF more than run it these days we need to get to the bottom of it as I love this app!

So the last update was in November, has there been any progress on this?

Probably not the most scientific test, Primarily I would time the gap between stutters during playback of live TV through my dvb tuner as well as observing CPU usage I found with 04 CPU peaked at about 10%, 03 peaked at over 15% if I recall. Both in 02 and 04 I was unable to time gaps between stutters.

01 TimerTest1 and 2 Disabled.reg
it should still be spiking every 60 seconds = True

02 TimerTest1 and 2 Enabled.reg
it should be better = True

03 TimerTest1 Enabled.reg
is it better or worse than "02 TimerTest1 and 2 Enabled.reg? = Worse

04 TimerTest2 Enabled.reg
is it better or worse than "02 TimerTest1 and 2 Enabled.reg = Equal or Better

I had the same results as Dave:

01 TimerTest1 and 2 Disabled.reg
it should still be spiking every 60 seconds = True

02 TimerTest1 and 2 Enabled.reg
it should be better = True

03 TimerTest1 Enabled.reg
is it better or worse than "02 TimerTest1 and 2 Enabled.reg? = Worse

04 TimerTest2 Enabled.reg
is it better or worse than "02 TimerTest1 and 2 Enabled.reg = Equal or Better

It should also be noted that about every 5-10 seconds I see the DisplayFusion.exe have mini spikes of about 1-2%, but its not performance-affecting. However in #1 and #3 from above, the 60 second spike is there, and its about 33-50%

Okay, do we need to do anything registry wise? Or will it fix what has been written in there already?

I'm finding that beta 6 does not resolve the problem. I still got a judder every 60 seconds playing video

Yea I'm getting similar 60 second spikes with beta 6 as well.

Had this issue too. Downloaded Beta 6 cause of the release note. It looks like Beta 7 fixed this issue for me. Before I had to close down display fusion in order to play certain games, now that looks to no longer be the case. Great Product I'm so happy this issue seems to be resolved.

Agreed, 8.0 Beta 7 does seem to solve the issue. Good job.

No problem, let us know when it is available and I'll retest.

It's back in Beta 8, although it's not as noticeable in game. The lag is probably about 25%~50% of what it was before. It's definitely harder to see it happen.

Its happening for me with beta 8, there's definitely a noticeable spike every 60 seconds. Granted not AS noticeable as the original issue, but it still makes the system unusable for a second or two.

I don't know if the error logs show this, but I notice that the lag seems to be effected by how many monitors I have going. I have 4 and get the 1-2 second lag. With just 3 it's maybe 0.25-1 seconds. And with 2 it's barely noticeable, but I wasn't timing exactly so it was kind of hard to tell on 2 monitors.

It doesn't seem to matter which monitors were active and which weren't. I have 3 1080p monitors and an old 3:4 monitor in horizontal portrait mode. I just unplugged the connection from the monitor and after windows were resized I could see an immediate difference.

I also tried removing other devices but they didn't seem to have an effect. Even removed my KVM, but didn't have an effect.

Perhaps it blocks all monitor's resources from other processes until it finished all of them and that's why the stutter is more prevailing with more monitors?

I have 6 monitors, 5 of which are 1080p and one is 2160p. I didnt think monitor resolutions would make a difference but I figured I would add that info. I bought this program BECAUSE of its ability to scale with different monitor resolutions though. =)

I'm having the same issue as everyone else, running the Steam version of DF. Running a 1070 GTX, i5-3570K, 16GB RAM. I have a 1440p monitor and a 1080p monitor, and I get horrific stutter every 60 seconds. Quitting DF is the only thing that fixes the issue. I've tried turning off wallpaper shuffling to see if that was it but to no avail. I also disabled my third monitor to see if that would do anything but it doesn't seem to have any affect.

Has there been any progress on this?

I'm still having the stuttering. Seems about the same as before, but I haven't looked too much into it to really tell if it's improved or gotten worse.

Definitely still there for me.

Perhaps the issue has something to do with Gsync? I've updated to an Asus ROG monitor and that's when I first noticed this issue.

8.0 official seems to improve/solve this problem. I didn't notice the lag every minute. There was one lag spike that seems to happen every 5 or 10 minutes, but I don't know if this is Display Fusion or not or is entirely consistent. If it is Display Fusion the lag seems to be a lot less noticeable and happens only a fraction of the time.

I'm tending to agree with Tyler Carlson.

I was still having problems with 8.0 until I installed the Windows 10 anniversary update. Now all of my issues seem to be resolved.

Hadn't checked in in a while. I just upgraded to 8.0 and its working for me as well. Thanks for all your help Keith, great support. Love this program ^__^.