Windows 10 build 9926 unusually high CPU utilization on Venue 11 Pro 7130 i3

Some information regarding my experience with the Windows 10 Preview, both pre-and-post Cortana on a Dell Venue 11 Pro:

1. The build(s) before the latest 9926 Technical Preview were far more similar to Windows 8.1
   1. They shared the same start menu and app store. It was almost like 8.1 with all it's bugs ironed out - and a few goodies tossed in. Worked really well on my V11P.
2. The 9926 build adds many great new features - but also adds tons of bugs .
   1. Look all around the net and you'll see common issues that are corroborated by many users of the technical preview. You'll have to take the good with the bad.
3. The in-place upgrades (Going 8.1 to 10) are problematic - ESPECIALLY with the newest 9926 Technical Preview
   1. My installation of the latest Win10 build, migrating my settings from 8.1 resulted in an install with tons of issues. My active stylus barely worked - the HID sensor driver would fail to load and have issues. It'd go to sleep mode and never go into low power, draining my battery. It'd 100% consistently fail to wake from sleep - I'd get a black screen that requires a hard shutdown and reboot. I also had the really high CPU usage with the WDF service. As mentioned above.
   2. All in all, lots of things don't really line up as you'd expect - and it's honestly not worth the trouble doing an in-place upgrade.

So with all of that said - what was the solution?

Fresh install. 

Here are the steps to getting the best installation of Windows 10 on a Venue 11 Pro (as I know it - from my experience). 

1. Download the ISO version - install it to a USB disk with the Rufus utility 
   1. Boot to it by pressing volume up a few times during boot till you get to the boot menu. Then use volume up to move down the list - volume down to select the highlighted boot device.
   2. After installing to the USB drive - copy over the latest copy of the Dell Wireless driver for your Intel/Dell wireless card, a copy of 7-zip, and a copy of the latest Dell Driver Pack CAB file for the 7130 to a directory on the USB Drive (make one, name it drivers or something).

2. Install the Windows 10 Technical Preview
   1. Delete all partitions on disk 0 (or whatever your SSD is) until you have one unpartitioned space - and install to it.
3. When you first boot - your display will be slow/choppy as all hell!
   1. This is primarily due to the fact that there are very few compatible drivers baked into Windows 10.
4. Do not start installing drivers from the Dell site - many will prove to be obsolete.
   1. Only install the Dell/Intel Wireless drivers so you can get network and internet connectivity
   2. Then install 7-Zip and extract the Dell Driver CAB file to a directory on your C:\ called "C:\Dell"
5. Now you've got a network connection - start Windows Update
   
   1. Windows will begin downloading drivers for various Intel chipset devices - including video.
   2. It'll ask to reboot - let it.
6. Now - if your tablet is anything like mine - after it reboots, it will start flickering like all hell.
   1. This is the Intel Video driver freaking the hell out. Your tablet may crash - just persist through the pain and keep going.
   2. I found mine to freak out more with using the touch screen - so I plugged in a mouse.
   3. Mine was fixed by disabling "Panel Self Refresh" in the Intel Graphics options menu (Right click desktop, Graphics Options). This setting is found under the power options section.
      1. Do so and reboot. My flickering stopped afterwards.
7. At this point - things worked as I expected and wanted, but open Device Manager
   1. (Start Menu - type "Device Manager") -- or -- (Start Menu -> Control Panel -> Device Manager)
   2. There was one last device without a driver, SM Bus Controller. Right click - Update Driver, and point it at the D:\Dell directory you extracted the CAB file to.
   3. It was't until I installed this device's driver that it would go into connected standby correctly.

Now - a word of caution. Unlike the earlier builds of Win 10 - my connected standby sessions drain about 1,500mW/hr. This is what I saw in Win 8.1 no matter what I tried - I wonder if there's some kind of driver issue - and needs replacing. My sleep study reports show no offenders - everything is running for less than 1% of the sleep cycle, but the hardware isn't going down to C3 sleep state, which is where the power drain is coming from. Seems like a chipset driver of some kind of malfunctioning - I'll do a trace and try to isolate the issue.

Other than this - everything has been MUCH more stable. Sleeping (though draining battery) are rock solid consistent, I don't have the high CPU usage in the WDF service anymore, and the active stylus is working exactly as it should.

I'm going to shut it down between uses for now - and keep testing and see if there's a chipset driver or something that fixes this.

I wish I had seen your post earlier. You need to let this process run. It optimizes and compresses drivers after installation. It took a day or two of use with my Surface Pro 3 (i5 8GB) to finish. It took a little longer on the Dell Venue 8 Pro. Trust me it WILL finish and then your computer will be ready to use, and should be working properly.

To summarize what I've found out for now:

I performed a clean startup, i.e. no non-MS services enabled (can be done from msconfig), followed by restarts enabling all those services one after the other (they should be at most a dozen) and it appears that the Realtek Sound Service is the culprit. Disabling it solves the problem most of the time with no apparent ill effects.

When it comes up the process is easily killed via task manager with, again, no apparent ill effects, but this surely isn't the optimal way.