Anyone have experience using Procmon for Windows?

[irpacynot]

Been having terrible issues (10-30 sec freeze-ups constantly occurring when trying to mix) here in the past few weeks when using Waveform 12, and after some digging, I found a suggestion that it could be due to Waveform getting overloaded with scanning for plugins.

There was a suggestion that Procmon could be used to suss out and correct issues. I downloaded it, but I've never used it.

[jabe]

I've used it quite a lot, though not recently. Also used other Sysinternals software.

You might want to start with ProcExp because it shows the usage and various dependencies. Might make it more obvious where the hold-up is happening. Sysinternals software usually has filters so you don't see stuff you're not interested in.

[JsinOwl]

I've used ProcMon a ton, very useful, but I haven't used it for anything like what you need. I use it to find out what's writing to disk and stamp those processes out if possible to extend SSD life. In the end, for all my effort, I'll probably extend its life by a whopping 20 minutes, but it makes me feel better. lol

[irpacynot]

Hmm...

Well first, thank you both for responding. I've never used this sort of utility before.

Um, when I extracted the zip file, it shows me three forms of the software: Procmon, Promon64 and Procmon64a. Not sure which one to start with. I'm using Window 11 on a Dell i7-12700k (3.60 GHz) 32 GB RAM, if any of that helps.

[jabe]

Doesn't matter much which you use. Use the 64 one. It won't hurt anything. Just run it and watch what happens. Have a bit of a play. Not sure about the 64a one... might be for AMD processors, but that's just a guess. ProcMon is probably for anyone still running a 32-bit processor. Have a play with filtering what it shows you. You will find that millions of messages come very quickly, but you can pause it or restart it from within to help get rid of stuff you're not interested in.

Do you use Task Manager? I tend to have it running all the time, acting like a sort of speedometer. You could use it as a starting point. If you can, arrange a set of actions that always or almost always cause the problem, then look on Task Manager to see what's hogging the machine's resources. Hopefully it'll point you in the right direction.

This is one of the sites I have open pretty much all the time I'm awake, so I'll be here or hereabouts for more help. That said, I don't know why it took me six days to see your post!

[irpacynot]

Doesn't matter much which you use. Use the 64 one. It won't hurt anything. Just run it and watch what happens. Have a bit of a play. Not sure about the 64a one... might be for AMD processors, but that's just a guess. ProcMon is probably for anyone still running a 32-bit processor. Have a play with filtering what it shows you. You will find that millions of messages come very quickly, but you can pause it or restart it from within to help get rid of stuff you're not interested in.

Do you use Task Manager? I tend to have it running all the time, acting like a sort of speedometer. You could use it as a starting point. If you can, arrange a set of actions that always or almost always cause the problem, then look on Task Manager to see what's hogging the machine's resources. Hopefully it'll point you in the right direction.

This is one of the sites I have open pretty much all the time I'm awake, so I'll be here or hereabouts for more help. That said, I don't know why it took me six days to see your post!

Oh yeah, I have task manager pinned to the taskbar. But here's the thing, when Waveform is hiccuping like that (sometimes up to 30-second long), the resources are fine. Memory rarely ever gets up to 25%, and CPU almost never goes above 5%, if that.

[jabe]

Good. Perhaps ProcMon or ProcExp will help.

[Peter Widdicombe]

Just curious - was it just the GUI affected, or did audio hiccup as well?

I had the video freezing but audio playing normally; and to fix, adjusted display settings to use the software renderer rather than the Direct2D option. Also interesting is that it DEFAULTED blank (none set). I didn't have that on my secondary machine, but it's a desktop with only one monitor.

[irpacynot]

Just curious - was it just the GUI affected, or did audio hiccup as well?

I had the video freezing but audio playing normally; and to fix, adjusted display settings to use the software renderer rather than the Direct2D option. Also interesting is that it DEFAULTED blank (none set). I didn't have that on my secondary machine, but it's a desktop with only one monitor.

That's kind of exactly what is happening. The music keeps playing, but my ability to interface with anything inside Waveform is disabled. My cursor still moves freely, but the sound meters all temporarily freeze. But yeah, the music continues to play fine.

[Peter Widdicombe]

Software renderer worth a try, then...

[talby]

I read that you are on WF 12.
If I remember correctly, then like you I have had observed graphics rendering of WF freezing while audio continued to play in WF 12, actually WF12 for Linux (I never tested WF for Win that time).

I around WF 13.5 moved to a new laptop, and I am not sure if it was the upgrade from W13 to W13.5 or the the new laptop which eventually solved it for me. I do not remember to have had issues with freezing graphics again.

By the way, I am meanwhile on WF 14 and this now feels on this same newer laptop notably faster in all situations. I mean, I notice it so clearly, that I have no doubts about it and would not see any need to prove for it by some benchmark test. The responsiveness of WF13.5 was fine for me, but the responsiveness of WF14 feels significantly accelerated, it really feels "speedy" throughout.

Maybe have backups at a safe place of your WF 12 projects, and of your current WF 12 settings file, and remember to not touch them.
Archive with WF12 one of the WF12 projects which currently shows the issue and recover it under a new name in a demo version of WF14. To stay save, when WF14 asks you to keep the original version while converting to the new project format, of course answer to keep a copy of the original. So you should have a copy in W12 format from the conversion, and anyway another copy of it your own manual backups of all your W12 projects. With sufficient tinkering skills you should be able to recover from your backups, if temporarily testing WF14 would mess up something.
You will find out on your same hardware and OS configuration, if it is a bug in W12 (which won't be fixed anymore after a new version became released, according to my experience), or if the issue remains and it would indeed make sense to further investigate this issue in your current configurations on your current hardware.

Good luck!

[irpacynot]

Software renderer worth a try, then...

So, are those options within Waveform, or in the Windows settings? I nosed around in both, but didn't find anything similar to what you were referring to.

[Peter Widdicombe]

Waveform
Settings - advanced - Performance - GUI Rendering Mode.

Now, it's possible I'm not running advanced gaming settings possible on my video card, that might have affected the performance of the video card, but did find that setting made a big difference on W14 on my laptop to an HDMI 27" external display.

Another note - on my desktop machine, it is confusing - It appears not to be set either, or is not highlighted. I can SELECT either one, but not sure if I can revert it back to whatever the previous default was. Maybe it's in an INI file somewhere...

[talby]

Settings - advanced - Performance - GUI Rendering Mode.

This wasn't available already in W12, right?
If I remember correctly, then it became implemented with W13.5, when on Windows outdated OpenGL started to become discarded.
Correct me if I am wrong, though.