System Wide Audio Issues

This is going to be a bit lengthy, but I’ve had issues since late August.

*In the beginning, I was using a Sennheiser GSX 1000 USB sound card, which allowed be to instantly switch between speakers and my headphones.

Other that one game via Steam, I had not really added anything new software wise, problems first started with sound only coming out of right speaker (Klipsch ProMedia 2.1 THX), and it was muffled. Spoke to Klipsch and was told something in the left probably went. I purchased a new pair of Creative T100 stereo speakers, I now had sound from both speakers, but I start having issues while viewing video files or watch videos from the web. The audio would cut in and out, sometimes so bad it would disappear totally. The Sennheiser card was old, so I ordered a new USB card, a G8 from Creative. While wait for it to arrive, I connected my new speakers to the back IO panel of my PC, the mobo uses Realtek audio, this was somewhat better but I would get some static and audio still cutting out just not as bad. Some games were worse than others, sometimes I got slight static when audio cut in and out, and I would drop a few FPS.

New G8 arrived, audio was not any better, sometimes I would lose all audio with my speakers, but still have it in my headphones. I went around and around with creative jumping through all kinds of hoops, a few months later they decided to RMA and sent me a new G8, this time I could not get any audio from headset or speakers for all audio sources with the new unit. Then I got Creative to swap the G8 for a new X4.

While I waited for it to arrive a few weeks went by because the USPS lost the package, and Creative and to ship another. I had no choice but to go back to audio via my mobo, light static while watching video files and YouTube. Gaming is the worst it’s ever been, currently playing SnowRunner, audio cutting in and out constantly which causes frame drops from 10 to 35, which causes freezing and sometimes the game will totally freeze for 30 - 45 seconds. New X4 arrived, same audio issues, everything is just as bad with the new USB unit.

I did everything, when creative units where removed, I would remove their software/drivers, empty all the temp folders for windows, empty recycle bin, and restart or cold boot my system. I did a complete uninstall of everything Realtek and reinstalled the latest Realtek drivers, none of this made any difference. AMD graphics drivers where updated a couple of times. I rechecked all my connections several times, everything is good. None of my games really tax my PC that bad, it’s fairly strong CPU and GPU wise and has plenty of RAM.



Sys Specs:

ASRock X870 PRO RS WiFi
AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D
Memory - 64GB (32GBx2) - G.SKILL Trident Z5 Neo AMD EXPO Model F5-6000J3040G32GX2-TZ5NR
SSD - Crucial T700 Gen5 NVME M.2 SSD 2280 2TB PCI-Express 5.0
XFX Mercury AMD Radeon RX 9070XT OC
Corsair HX1200 1200 Watt Power Supply
NZXT Kraken Z73 360 Liquid CPU Cooler
Sound Blaster G8 USB sound - Mobo = 7.1 CH HD Audio (Realtek ALC1220 Audio Codec)
MSI MPG 321CURX QD-OLED 32" UHD 240Hz Curved Gaming Monitor
Case - Corsair 7000D Airflow
Win 11 Pro 64bit

It appears after further research that "Wdf01000" is the issue, about 45 seconds after my desktop is fully loaded, LatencyMon shows Wdf01000 spiking and stays all the way to the right. I followed a fix-it article, couple registry tweaks, some command lines, fixed nothing. I would be nice to find someone that actually has a fix or solution, from the search hits apparently a lot of people, especially gamers have this issue. One would think that Ms would just fix it in windows.

first open up the device manager and check for any errors.

then open the control panel
security and maintenance > maintenance
in this window click > reliability monitor
and check for errors

then Start > Windows tools
system information > components > problem devices
check for any errors

that should help give you an avenue to follow to resolve the problem.
best of luck Steve ..

Reliability monitor didn't really show anything, showed nothing to do with high IR executions or high DPC executions shown in LatencyMon. These drivers are the issue that basically is creating a bottleneck in my system. At times they will peg into the red with my desktop sitting idle.

Windows Tools/Problem Devices was dead empty, there were no entries.

open the device manager and uninstall all the drivers for this device
close the device manager and restart the system

Windows will reload the required drivers fresh
then see if there is any improvement.
best of luck Steve ..

You could try the latest BIOS, but not sure it will help much based on release notes (upcoming CPUs Compatibility).

For the motherboard - did you use the OEM Driver or from other source?

Would also be advisable to clean the Audio drivers leftovers - using DDU in Safe Mode, this helps sometimes - with possible conflicts.

How about "Power Management Settings" - did you disable every Power Saving features (both from Power Plan and Device Manager)?

Already running the latest bios.
I use the drivers from ASRock that are on my boards support page.
I had already update graphics drivers, and I always run DDU in safe mode, so done.
Power Plan is set to Balanced where it should be for this processor.

With all the registry tweaks I have found a a few changes, the problem has lessened, but it's still happening.
My nephew is coming here this weekend, we are going to build him a new gaming PC. I'm going to connect the bare minimum to start with, monitor, KB and mouse, install my game, test, then one at a time add all my external (USB) hardware to it. Processor will be different, still AMD, but same video card so all the drivers that will get loaded will be the same as mine. Looking to find out if any of my external hardware might be causing the pegged ISR and DPC, which start the audio issues and frame drops.