The (now locked) previous thread was:

http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/f9ab40a8-6681-4c66-bdbd-9de7b2fb021f/action?threadDisplayName=windows-81-gradually-slows-down-after-hours-speed-returns-normal-if-restart

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I don't know why it is locked anyway, as EMKOEMKO was one of the "founders" of that thread months ago.

So... to summarize:

Explorer.exe has some sort of problem in windows 8.1, the system UI gradually becomes more and more unresponsive/jerky. Most notably DWM related funtions. As soon as you relaunch explorer.exe the problem dissappears and gradually comes back after a few hours.

• Edited by SaccoSVD Tuesday, September 30, 2014 11:44 AM

Actually the problem also goes away if I unload dwm.dll

The screen goes black, then Win8 restarts it automatically and the UI works smoothly as expected again. So the problem is caused either by explorer.exe or dwm.exe

At least i know I can kill dwm instead of explorer and keep my tray icons.

• Edited by SaccoSVD Tuesday, September 30, 2014 10:56 PM

Hi.

I'm gonna try.

I already have process monitor, what should I check there specifically? CPU usage and RAM in this case are not a problem. Maybe the amount of threads, calls?

I pinpointed this problem to these two, either explorer or wdm.exe

I'll try and report.

In the meantime, did you read the info in the other thread (top)?

• Edited by SaccoSVD Wednesday, October 01, 2014 12:22 PM

1) Here are two logs from Process Monitor showing explorer.exe

https://www.sendspace.com/file/b7vl6u

With the problem.PML: This is when the issue is present and noticeable

Without the problem.PML: This is after restarting dwm.exe and explorer.exe

I cannot say if there's a problem, both look quite the same to me.

Also "dwm.exe" or "RocketDock.exe" don't return too much data, just sporadic thread creations or rare access to registry.

Explorer on both cases is constantly accessing the registry but it seems normal.

2) I also tried with a new blank user account and the problem doesn't seem to come up which suggests something else might be at work here but the system traces don't show anything abnormal and the fact the issue is temporarily fixed only when restarting explorer or dwm.

• Edited by SaccoSVD Thursday, October 09, 2014 11:22 AM

AHA!!! I think I found the problem.

Windows wallpaper slideshow. I had it set to "on" on my 3 monitors, changing wallpapers regularly each 30s, recently I put it to "one day" and since then the issue seems to be gone.

I'm setting it to 10s now and see if the issue comes back, if so, it should come back very quick.

Check that out!

Is that or Firefox, cause I've  switched back to Chrome cause Firefox was hogging the system if I leaved facebook open for too long, since I switched to Chrome the issue has also disappeared, at least around that time. I still need to confirm.

• Edited by SaccoSVD Friday, June 19, 2015 6:04 PM

I can confirm the problem is caused by the Windows Slideshow. Disable it or put it with a big timer and the problem will disappear.