A Viewer for Windows, ESP32 Projects, Cast, NotifyOnDemand, Push2Run and SetVol

It may have something to do with a game I'm running, but I know that I've found it taking up more than 90% of my CPU, when normally it takes no more than maybe 0.3% on average.

The only 3 things that seem to be in common with this problem are...

Playing Star Trek - Birth of the Federation
Letting it idle out until my screensaver kicks in
Game crashes (in this order)

Usually when I come back to it, I find the screensaver having problems kicking on (cuz of CPU usage), and my game has crashed to desktop. I usually have to terminate P2R from task manager when this happens. No errors at all in the session log.

Not sure if the problem with P2R starts before, or after the game crash. Game uses directX9, and DirectPlay in Windows 10.

I really can't imagine what this would be.

Can you try:

exiting Push2Run all together
Playing Star Trek - Birth of the Federation
Letting it idle out until your screensaver kicks in

after that, does your pc come out of screensaver mode and back into Star Trek ok?

No. The screensaver crashes the game regardless, (Known issue of the game itself), but of course CPU use is normal this way. With me following your test, i should also add to the list of things in common, and explain that so far, this issue has only appeared when playing it in multiplayer, as below.

GameRanger (noted as GR below) desktop app (for BOTF MP)
BOTF (Multiplayer)
While other play takes turn, I'm idling out (driving someone to work)
Screensaver kicks in
Game crashes to desktop
Game may, or may not have already been restarted from sync error (This is part of what I need to check)

There is another bit that gets thrown in here too, but not entirely sure of it's relevance. The game is started on host, and all clients by GR. On some turns, there are sync errors between the host, and clients, where host saves the game, and the clients fails to. This crashes back out to desktop too, but on host, and clients, then i start the game again, and load the host save.

I plan on playing MP again tonight. As an added test, I will have P2R running, and check between sync errors, until I see the huge CPU spike, and I will update you with the results.

>> The screensaver crashes the game regardless

sounds like Push2Run could be another innocent bystander, is an option just to disable your screensaver?

it's always an option, but i might just make sure P2R isn't running, when the game is running. I wasn't able to reproduce the issue tonight, so it too seems sporadic. I even tried shortening the screensaver wait time to 5 minutes, letting it crash the game, and got no CPU spikes from P2R. Ultimately, I just gave up, and closed P2R for the duration.

Yet again, i wasn't able to reproduce it. I will be testing over the next few days, looking for the conditions that do so. As soon as I can make it happen again, I will get as much info as I can for you.

I was able to reproduce it again, but this time from a different game. This time, multiple items were showing high CPU usage, and as soon as I terminated P2R, everything dropped down to normal levels. Whatever it's doing is wreaking havoc.

what do you mean by "multiple items were showing high CPU usage", does this only happen when your screen saver goes on?

in this case, the screensaver hadn't been involved. I was in the middle of playing Grid 2, and out of nowhere performance went from high to being so bad that even lowest quality settings in game has no effect (dropped from solid 60 FPS to an average of 15).

I exited the game, opened task manager. Several items were using high CPU. Some of which I closed (Display fusion, explorer, Steam) there were a few other things doing the same, and P2R was one of them. Soon as I closed it, the remaining items that were consuming high CPU returned to normal CPU usage levels within a few seconds.

There was another thread i noticed about high CPU usage that was dismissed... If I were to take that into account, I do keep my system running for days, or even weeks at a time, with P2R always there. Might be why I haven't been able to reproduce this on demand.

Well it might be a windows silent update or something, although I run Push2Run on my basement server for days and weeks at a time without issue. I just checked, and its been running fine since May 15th (today is June 7th).