My experience with XPS 12 Windows 8 software issues

Ok so Process Explorer tells me the parent process for bcedit.exe is pcdrcui.exe aka PC Doctor aka Dell Support Center app! What's going on here, why does it need to start bcdedit in the background doing nothing except to use 30% of the CPU cycles?

Ok so Process Explorer tells me the parent process for bcedit.exe is pcdrcui.exe aka PC Doctor aka Dell Support Center app! What's going on here, why does it need to start bcdedit in the background doing nothing except to use 30% of the CPU cycles?

VSS is flaring up now...

(from event log)

Volume Shadow Copy Service Warning: A writer with name ASR Writer and ID {be000cbe-11fe-4426-9c58-531aa6355fc4} waited 4294967 seconds for in-progress calls to complete before shutting down.

After a little digging I found these information:

msdn.microsoft.com/.../bb968827(v=vs.85).aspx

answers.microsoft.com/.../9b501aa0-cd7f-e011-9b4b-68b599b31bf5

backupchain.com/.../Troubleshooting.html

I'm just going ahead to uninstall the Backup and Recovery tool first and see if these problems go away or not...

Do you have the same bcdedit problem too?

I'm only highlighting the dptf one as it generated an event log right about the time bcdedit flared up for me

bcdedit is flaring up now...

(from event log - suspected related cause)

The description for Event ID 1 from source DptfPolicyLpmServiceHelper cannot be found. Either the component that raises this event is not installed on your local computer or the installation is corrupted. You can install or repair the component on the local computer.

If the event originated on another computer, the display information had to be saved with the event.

The following information was included with the event:

DptfPolicyLpmServiceHelper

CreateSharedMemory:  CreateFileMapping() failed.

Last error = [0x00000005]

Seems to be related to Intel's software, and I see it as part of my startup items...

systemexplorer.net/.../dptfpolicylpmservicehelper-exe

Safe to disable this for startup?

Actually, after a bit more Googling...

forum.notebookreview.com/.../650572-new-dell-xps-l521x-ivy-bridge-536.html

"To ensure that the maximum temperature won't be reached there are different power modulation schemes, and the temperature threshold can be set by the manufacturer. And 90°C sounds a common temperature, because it is exactly 15°C less than the max allowable temperature."

" LPM is only available using the Intel DPTF

driver.

Through the DPTF driver, LPM can be configured to use each of the following methods

to reduce active power:

• Restricting Turbo Boost Power limits and IA core Turbo Boost availability

• Off-Lining core activity (Move processor traffic to a subset of cores)

• Placing an IA Core at LFM or MFM (Minimum Frequency Mode)

• Utilizing IA clock modulation

"

However, if the bcdedit issue is related to this dptfpolicylpmservicehelper.exe (actually it does look like bcdedit did something really wrong, causing the latter to step in and somehow encounter an error too, thus the event log)

Thanks for this. I'd seen the dptfpolicylpmservicehelper error on my system, but I'd not been able to find anything in Google (and no one at Dell seemed to know what it was, either). Hopefully this helps them track down where the issue lies.

I'm not seeing the bcdedit error. But one of the first things I did was uninstall various bits of Dell software I didn't want, including the PC Doctor/Dell Support stuff.

I hadn't looked at the event log in a week (waiting for a whole unit replacement - and have been for 3 weeks now, still no sign of shipping), right now it seems littered with "A multi-touch device reported inconsistent contact information." errors, the dptfpolicy... error, and I'm getting a ton of ESENT errors complaining data is taking an abnormally long time to be written. Windows claims this is likely indicative of a hardware problem. But yeah. My event log looks kind of catastrophic, the number of errors I'm seeing.

I was lucky enough to receive my XPS12 i7 256GB SSD configuration just before Christmas, but I'm also finding after using my computer for a while, bcedit.exe appears in the process list and eats up about 30% CPU. This causes a real issue when working on battery (battery drains really quickly).

Reboot obviously gets rid of it (trying to terminate directly results in permission denied errors).

This is really frustrating and spoiling what is otherwise an excellent laptop.

Sounds like this may be a common problem, has anybody yet found a work around - does removing the Dell software help? I've not installed any drivers from Dell's site as I appear to have the latest versions of everything already installed.

Ok, so that others can benefit from this knowledge:

I uninstalled the Dell Support tool (aka PC Doctor) and the bcdedit processor hogging went away.  I had previously uninstalled the Backup and Recovery tool, so I don't know if that also helps.

But other than regular processor-intensive activities, I've been running all day without bcdedit hogging the CPU and spinning up the fan!

I've not tried removing the Dell Support tool yet, as I want to hang on to it, just in case Dell ping out a notification of some important system or driver update (also has all the testing tools Dell may ask to run), but I agree that it is a very likely culprit.

I've removed the Dell support tool, but since doing so, the issue has repeated it self twice in two days. I have a feeling it has something to do with going on to battery power (something I do quite often for short periods of time). Will look at un-installing the backup and recovery tool next (once I've taken a backup!)

The issue is still occurring despite removing both Dell Support and Dell Backup utilities.

I too am seeing the issue of 30% CPU by VSS.

Pretty much making this laptop unusable. 

Any hints how to fix of should I just return it? I have removed all the dell bloat and still have the issue.

Wow quite a number of replies here...

Thought it's about time I make my own updates here. I have removed both the Dell "utilities" and the occurrences have drastically reduced. In fact, I think I removed them around New Year and I only recalled three times when the fan spins up again and "Host Processes for Windows Tasks" eats 30% of CPU utilization. So it is working largely for me...

Maybe we should compare by the various batches of laptops too? I got mine in early November.

BTW are there updated drivers for the touchpad? I've noticed that it is recently mistakenly some of my single taps as double taps! I wish I can just disable it outright...

Does anyone else have any idea's?  I'm still seeing frequent occurrences of "Host Process for Windows Tasks" chewing up upwards of 30-40% CPU.  Looking at process explorer, the parent process is simply "services.exe".  I've uninstalled all of the utilities mentioned in this post, and still running into the issue.

Overall, I love this machine, and at least the reboot only takes a few seconds, but it's very annoying having to reboot everytime this "Host Process for Windows Tasks" fires up.