Man, I just typed out an entire message on here and the forum ate it. Serves me right for not copying it before posting. Was probably for the best, as the post was probably too long.

So I'll be briefer this time:

Running an AMD Athlon 64 X2 4400+ at 2.21Ghz with 4GB RAM and Windows 7. Have been experiencing "hiccups" where the CPU seems to stall out either the entire computer or just one process. These last from 2 to 5 seconds, generally, and then everything resumes like it had never happened. Sometimes it's just an individual process like VLC or Firefox, but other stuff seems to be working okay, other times everything seems to freeze for a few seconds. Either way, it generally clears up shortly thereafter.

I did a host of checks on hardware and software and came up empty. I began monitoring individual processes after using it in safe mode a while and not experiencing the issue, but this wasn't very scientific as I literally have to sit and watch the PC to see that the problem has come up. It leaves no other evidence of itself.

So when I booted back into the OS proper, I did have a hiccup, and it looked like in task manager that DisplayFusion popped to the top of the CPU-usage list and went red. It looked like 100% of the CPU was being used for just a moment, causing everything else to stop. I loaded up perfmon to get a better look, and did experience several times when DF did indeed eat up 100% CPU. I turned it off for a while and the problem stopped. I loaded it again and changed the options to force it to a single CPU core and to act as a low-priority process, and that actually seemed like it might fix things, but then I had another instance.

Over time, the problem appears to get worse, in the sense that eventually, after maybe a 4 days or a week, the system comes to a raging halt. It doesn't hard lock, but windows turn black and won't render, and you can't close anything. The last time this happened was after I'd made the changes to DF and left it running. One of my downloads had an IO error and stalled out, the messages I was sending in IRC never showed up in the chat after I pressed enter (though I could still type them) nor did anyone in the chat see them come through, and I couldn't manipulate anything. I was able to kill DF, then loaded task manager, but it took a good 30 seconds to load. I killed VLC also. Still nothing. Then I noticed another program I use to stream video (Niji Show) had left several EXEs floating around I guess from improper exits that morning (the service was down so I'd repeatedly loaded and closed it to see if it had come back up). One was using 40-something% CPU. I killed all of these and still nothing. After another 30 seconds to a minute, however, everything just suddenly started working again. The instance of Firefox that was still running was corrupt, however, and it had to be closed and reopened again to work properly. Beyond that, it was like it had never happened.

So obviously this isn't as scientific as I'd like it to be. However, I've had DF off since last night, and as of 11 this morning I still haven't run into any problems. It's looking likely that DF is the true culprit here, but I can't be sure. I do know for a fact that DF has been causing these CPU-usage hiccups, which have been a thorn in my side. Whether it's responsible for the more major not-quite-hard-locks, I don't yet know, but it seems likely. I had originally thought the problem to be hardware-related, as I just put in a new PSU after the fan on my old one died, but it may have coincided with an update to DF? I don't know as I wasn't watching closely. I had experience less-severe hiccups with DF in the past, so it wasn't entirely new. But they seem to have gotten a lot worse.

Anyway, I apologize for posting somewhat prematurely, but i have a tendency to forget or give up, and I really, really love DF and would hate to have to stop using it, so wanted to be proactive. Thanks for taking the time to read all this.

I spent the entirety of yesterday without DF loaded, and experienced none of the issues that have been plaguing me, just as an FYI. I've been using 6.1.2, so I'll give beta 9 a shot and see whether or not that doesn't help things. I'll report back!

Just as a brief update, I've been using beta 9 for almost 24 hours now. Of course a good number of those hours were sleep and/or doing other stuff hours, but so far I haven't detected a single CPU-grab from DF during any of my usual activities. Watching with perfmon again and it seems to be much, much better about CPU use in general, even aside from the lack of hiccups. Hopefully this is a sign of good things! I'll report back if any further issues raise their heads, but otherwise, we can count this a win. Thanks much!