USB lag when mouse cursor changes

Question

Please, do not consider this question as a duplicate of this one -- it’s not an Intel graphics problem in my case and the issue is a bit different.

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I’ve got a new PC with Windows 10 and experiencing a weird issue with USB devices.

Issue

When mouse cursor icon changes (like when hovering a browser URL link or a text field) a USB lag between 500ms to 2seconds occurs. By USB lag I mean that any device connected to any USB port stops responding: mouse stops moving, keyboard not responding, audio drops out (I use an external USB audio interface). It’s not happening at each transition, but somewhat randomly, though quite persistently.

Imagine moving mouse cursor over a Google search results page: the cursor state will change to hand when hovering a URL link, to text selection when hovering description text below the links and to pointer when in the “free” areas. In my case mouse will constantly lag and the sound drop-out if I would just move the cursor over such page.

System info

• OS: Windows 10 Pro
• CPU: Intel Core i7 6900K
• Motherboard: ASUS X99-A
• GPU: ASUS STRIX GTX1080-O8G-GAMING
• DDR: 8x8GB, DDR4, Crucial Ballistix Elite, 2666 Mhz
• SSD: 2 TB, Samsung 850 PRO
• HDD: 3Tb SATA-III Western Digital Red (WD30EFRX)
• External USB devices: wireless mouse (Logitech G900), wireless keyboard (Logitech K800), USB 2.0 Audio Interface (Roland QUAD-CAPTURE)

What I’ve tried

• Using Windows Clean Boot – the issue persisted;
• Installing fresh Windows 10 – issue occurs right from the start;
• Trying different drivers for the USB devices/controllers and the MB chipset – no changes;
• Trying different NVidia drivers – no changes;
• Updating motherboard BIOS to the latest version – no changes;
• Switching HCI mode in BIOS – there was definitely some effect here. In EHCI mode (USB 2) the mouse lags were much more noticeable, while the audio drop-outs were at minimum, and in xHCI (USB 3) it was vice-versa: more audio lags and less mouse;
• Using different USB ports – there was some subtle difference depending on what USB ports I’ve used. When a device is connected to an Intel USB controller port the lags are more frequent, while ASMedia’s ports had less issues;
• Disabling any power saving features in BIOS, Windows power management and in the device manager for each of the USB devices and USB controllers – no difference;
• Unplugging all the USB devices except the mouse – no changes;
• Using different mouses (both wired and wireless) – no changes;
• Trying another GPU – no changes;
• Trying another Motherboard (ROG STRIX X99) – completely solved mouse lag issue, but audio drop-outs persisted in xHCI mode;
• Disabling all the mouse features in Windows mouse settings (enhance pointer precision, pointer trails, pointer hiding when typing, pointer shadow) – no changes, except for trails (more on that below).

The weird

Now, the weirdest thing about this: enabling the “display pointer trails” option in the Windows mouse settings completely solves the issue! I can’t really comprehend why this happening, how could such “cosmetic” option affect all the USB devices in the system? I’ve set the trail distance to be as short, as possible, but it’s still noticeable and quite distracting, so I’m looking for a way to fix the issue without enabling the trails.

Answer 1

I was able to avoid the same reproducible problem with my Universal Audio Apollo Twin USB 3.0 audio interface by using their latest driver 9.2 in which they have added the new option "USB Safety Buffer", which is part of the "USB Audio Transfer protocol 2.0" which has been added to Windows 10 with the Creators Update.

You might need a new audio driver from Roland which supports the "USB Audio Transfer protocol 2.0" for Windows 10 incl. Creators Update.

In my case LatencyMon reported dxgkrnl.sys with highest execution of 1.6 ms which is too high (max 1.0 ms allowed). I think in my case its the Intel Display Driver 630 which doesn't return fast enough to dxgkrnl.sys (as far as I understand). I would have to report this to Intel.

In the audio driver I had to increase the USB Safety Buffer from "Minimal" to "Small" and until today I had no audio drop outs anymore. As far I understand, "Small" adds 1 ms to standard 1 ms - in total 2 ms time before audio drop outs could occur.

Please read my Intel report: https://communities.intel.com/message/483201

If your are not able to get a new audio driver - try to use LatencyMon and contact the driver providers.