Rainmeter "hitching" every few seconds, pausing skin updates

[CrushBug]

Sometime in the past 2 weeks, Rainmeter has started "hitching" on my computer. What I mean by that, is that the meter updates that show CPU, RAM, etc on my system will all pause updating for a second or two, then resume updating. It is most obvious on meters showing graphs of temps, etc., as the lines all stop updating. It is every meter at the same time.

Additionally, it is not just the meters, but the actual Rainmeter application. If I open up About or Manage, the Rainmeter UI hitches at the same time as the meters. Same for the right-click menu on the tray icon. It is like the whole application is freezing every few seconds.

Things I have tried:

• hardware acceleration on and off
• restarts
• video driver updates
• unloading meters
• shutting down other apps (not all yet, still mixing and matching)

Here is a screenshot of the Rainmeter.exe performance graph in Process Explorer. The CPU spikes are interesting.



Anyone have any other ideas, or encountered something like this in the past?

[balala]

How many skins do you have activated? And what those skins are? What are the specifications of your computer?
Because if there are too many skins and especially if those skins are let's say "hard" skins (some visualizers, maybe even more than one) and your computer is not powerful enough, this could cause the described problems.

[David8192]

It also happens when you several have skins which show images or shapes with low Update. And like balala said, depends on the power of the computer.

[Active Colors]

For me it looks that one of the skins is a culprit for these spikes.
Look at the I/O graph. It seems that some skin is regularly reading and writing a lot of info which causes the performance issue.


I would suggest this:
1. Unload all your running skins so there are no skins running at all.
2. Quit Rainmeter and launch it again.
3. Look at your performance graphs in your monitoring software. Does the same issue happen?

4. If there are no spikes it means that one of the skins was the reason for your "hitches".
5. Then you need to find out which skin is the reason for this.
6. Gradually run your skins one by one while observing your performance graphs at the same time.
7. When the graphs start to spike it means that whichever skin you have just launched is causing this issue.
8. Make sure to double check if it is this skin that you have just launched is causing the performance issues. Just unload this skin and see if the spikes stopped to appear.
9. If the spikes stopped to appear after you unloaded your skin it means you caught the trouble skin. Send the link to the skin here so we can give you feedback.

[David8192]

It also happens when you several have skins which show images or shapes with low Update. And like balala said, depends on the power of the computer.

I don't know whether I was in a hurry my energy was just low

[CrushBug]

Thank you all for the suggestions. The issue has stopped happening with no changes to skins, Rainmeter, plugins, etc. There were 3 changes and I will list them here, as one or more were the solution for me.

• KB5008876 Cumulative Update for .NET Framework 3.5 and 4.8
• KB5009543 Cumulative Update for Windows 10 Version 21H2
• NVIDIA 511.23 video drivers

Something in one of the Windows updates or a change in the NVIDIA driver, or some weird combo has fixed the issue and Rainmeter is back to its smooth self.

Things that I had tried, based on suggestions, that didn't change anything, before the above 3 updates.

• loading and unloading individual skins (I have been running the same skins for a year, never any problems with them before 2-3 weeks ago)
• Rainmeter restarts
• computer restarts
• shutting down other apps (Wallpaper Engine, monitoring apps, etc.)

Question about computer specs: Win 10 64 bit, Intel Core i7-10700K CPU @ 3.80GHz, 32 GB RAM, NVIDIA RTX3080.

Once again, thanks for your replies. I appreciate the responses.

[balala]

Something in one of the Windows updates or a change in the NVIDIA driver, or some weird combo has fixed the issue and Rainmeter is back to its smooth self.

I'd say the most important was the video driver update. It's just a guess however...

[CrushBug]

I think you are right, but I wanted to list all the changes. Sometimes the interrelationships are hard to piece together.

My son's video card stopped putting out a signal on the Display Port (HDMI still worked). Turns out the problem was an optional Windows Update for some Intel motherboard driver and once it was installed, the Display Port started working again. That was the craziest thing I ever had to diagnose.

[balala]

My son's video card stopped putting out a signal on the Display Port (HDMI still worked). Turns out the problem was an optional Windows Update for some Intel motherboard driver and once it was installed, the Display Port started working again. That was the craziest thing I ever had to diagnose.

As far as I can tell, there are many crazy thing related to Windows Updates. even if this is weird as well, there probably are much more weirder sometimes.
Glad you got it fixing the issue.