The Notebook Review forums were hosted by TechTarget, who shut down them down on January 31, 2022. This static read-only archive was pulled by NBR forum users between January 20 and January 31, 2022, in an effort to make sure that the valuable technical information that had been posted on the forums is preserved. For current discussions, many NBR forum users moved over to NotebookTalk.net after the shutdown.
Problems? See this thread at archive.org.

    Macbook Pro(late 08): Deferred Procedure Calls in Vista

    Discussion in 'Apple and Mac OS X' started by D3X, Dec 4, 2008.

  1. D3X

    D3X the robo know it all

    Reputations:
    688
    Messages:
    1,666
    Likes Received:
    6
    Trophy Points:
    56
    Here's basically what's been happening on my MBP for quite some time, I've been researching quite a bit as to why it's happening.

    It all started when I needed to use Vista/Windows 32 bit for my mostly dominant PC office environment. I'm a web graphics developer and I need to use mainly Microsoft products like Visual Studio / Visual Source safe on a daily work basis.
    Things seemed fine after the Vista 32bit installation, however I was constantly feeling a consistent and annoying hiccup every 30secs - 60 secs or so. I was also suffering from audio skipping and video skipping from this same cause. At first I thought it could have been some type of malware or virus, but considering that it's a fresh new install and with Nod32 installed right away the chance is very unlikely. I did run Adware checks and AntiVirus software. Using Task Manager in Windows, I didn't really notice any excessive CPU usage, just the seldom spike to 40% but didn't look like the direct culprit.

    Digging deeper, I downloaded Process Explorer, and there I finally saw the dreaded "Deferred Procedure Call" spiking up to 17-25% every 30-60 secs. So I googled DPC, and found this article by alexp. I thought I found the solution, so I downloaded DPClat.exe and ran it.

    Here's some screenshots
    [​IMG]

    Downloaded the KBDMgr that he created and replaced the Apple one. Unfortunately this didn't solve the issue. I don't think it's the cause of the problem for MBP(late 08), maybe the Macbook(late 08) on XP systems.

    I dug even deeper.
    So I started disabling alot of the drivers in Control Panel>Device Manager. I initially thought it may be a soundcard or Videocard driver. Downloaded and installed the newest Realtek as well as Laptopvideo2Go Nvidia 178.14 & 180.44.

    Same thing.

    The last thing was the WIFI driver.
    And voila! What do you know. It was the Broadcom 802.11n Network Adapter driver 4.170.77.3! Having it disabled reduced it the DPC latency to 10000 ms. there's still something else causing the slight DPC, but at least it wasn't hitting the 40,000 -90,000 range!!!.

    I tried looking for newer Broadcom drivers, but to no avail. The previous version of 4.170.25 doesn't connect to networks, still causes DPC latency issueswhen the driver is enabled(although not nearly as bad, but bad enough).

    Anyone else having similar issues? thoughts? comments?
     
    D3X, Dec 4, 2008
    #1
  2. D3X

    D3X the robo know it all

    Reputations:
    688
    Messages:
    1,666
    Likes Received:
    6
    Trophy Points:
    56
    Nothing new found unfortunately. I'm plagued by this issue, and it's rather annoying. Tried even older drivers 4.150.xx but those don't even recognize the card. Does anyone else run Boot Camp with Vista on the new MacBook Pros?
     
    D3X, Dec 4, 2008
    #2
  3. D3X

    D3X the robo know it all

    Reputations:
    688
    Messages:
    1,666
    Likes Received:
    6
    Trophy Points:
    56
    D3X, Dec 23, 2008
    #3
  4. zambie

    zambie Notebook Consultant

    Reputations:
    45
    Messages:
    187
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    30
    Don't have anything informative to add... but... kudos... that's quite a bit of cool debugging...
    cheers...!
    hope u manage to figure out the remaining niggle...
     
    zambie, Dec 23, 2008
    #4
  5. D3X

    D3X the robo know it all

    Reputations:
    688
    Messages:
    1,666
    Likes Received:
    6
    Trophy Points:
    56
    LOL cool debugging, yeah used to work as a computer technician and I tweaked all my PCs. This is my first Apple computer, and it's been fun so far except for this...

    I'm running Vista with the WIFI disabled, and it's night and day compared to the performance before. I also had to kill the Apple KBdmgr software entirely. There's still very minor DPC delays, but it's nothing that would cause severe responsive problems.

    Problem is, I wan't WIFI enabled with the possibility of gaming on this MBP. I'm slightly concerned as Vista support has been pretty dissappointing so far from Apple. Is there anybody that has successfully been able to play games in Bootcamp(without severe slowdowns) on the new unibody macbooks?
     
    D3X, Dec 23, 2008
    #5
  6. Snigel

    Snigel Newbie

    Reputations:
    4
    Messages:
    1
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    5
    Hi
    The wifi-latency is very related to that windows is constantly scanning, since it's booth a 5GHz 802.11a radio and 2.4GHz 802.11b/g the 802.11a part will raise the latency, but can be disabled without affecting the 802.11b/g.

    There is a thread here about it
    http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=8471653
     
    Snigel, Jan 11, 2009
    #6
  7. StrongerThanAll

    StrongerThanAll Notebook Deity

    Reputations:
    89
    Messages:
    994
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    30
    yeap, that thing solved my problem while playing games
     
    StrongerThanAll, Jan 11, 2009
    #7