Total Commander makes the processor run at 100% frequency

[dobandvla]

Windows 10 Enterprise 2004-21H2
When windows doing nothing (cpu utilization is 1-2%) and TC brings to front (doing nothing too), windows always switches to
100% frequency disregarding maximum processor state setting (and cpu utilization is still 1-2%).

[Horst.Epp]

And what is the real problem with this ?

[ghisler(Author)]

Not confirmed. Maybe TC is actually doing something, e.g. reading a large directory or loading thumbnails or overlay icons?
Does this happen also when both panels show an empty folder? You may need to close and re-open Total Commander in these folders to stop any background operations.

[Hacker]

Christian,
Please note, it is not 100 % CPU usage, but max. CPU frequency.

Roman

[dobandvla]

And what is the real problem with this ?

But we in "bugs" topic, not "real problems" one, whatever that means?

[dobandvla]

Maybe TC is actually doing something, e.g. reading a large directory or loading thumbnails or overlay icons?

No, it's just opened.

Does this happen also when both panels show an empty folder? You may need to close and re-open Total Commander in these folders to stop any background operations.

Panels not empty. I tried closing and opening. 100% frequency boost (in my case 0.8->3.6 GHz on pentium G4600) always happens (instant) when switching to TC, and go to 0.8 again when switching to somewhere else.
It was on 9.51 too, was it earlier I don't know.

[Dalai]

I've never seen such a thing, and I watch the parameters of my system(s) pretty closely. You should test this with a fresh wincmd.ini, like this:

Code: Select all

totalcmd.exe /i="%TEMP%\fresh.ini"

(Replace totalcmd.exe with totalcmd64.exe if you use TC 64-bit.)

It might be something system-related, maybe a shell extension.

Regards
Dalai

[Horst.Epp]

Watching with HWINFO64 v7.20 there are no such effects
on my Intel Core i7-10510U system.

[dobandvla]

You should test this with a fresh wincmd.ini, like this:

Code: Select all

totalcmd.exe /i="%TEMP%\fresh.ini"

(Replace totalcmd.exe with totalcmd64.exe if you use TC 64-bit.)

Thanks for advice. Just tried this - same thing.

[Dalai]

Which power profile are you using? Did you try to reset the power profile, or select another one? It's also possible that some background program triggers this when it detects TC in the foreground. What I'm trying to say is that I have a hard time believing that TC would trigger this on its own.

Regards
Dalai

[Horst.Epp]

May be he has some Autohotkey script running in the background which trigger on TCs Window classes.

[dobandvla]

Which power profile are you using? Did you try to reset the power profile, or select another one?

I am using custom power plan (created long time ago (2017?), maybe when windows 10 was windows 7 ), based on built-in "high performance" power plan. In which I set minimum processor state to 5% and maximum to 100%, which, in turn, caused the processor frequency to switch in the range between 0.8 and 3.6 GHz.
According to your advice (thanks for that!) I just reset all power plans, deleted the custom one, and created a new one based on "high performance" (again) with settings same to deleted old one. Аfter that, TC stopped causing Windows to increase the processor frequency to 100%. Outputs of powercfg /query for old and new custom power plans are identical.
Also I noticed, in idle system state, that after switching to new custom plan, task manager never shows CPU frequency lower than 40% (1.55 GHz) of max (with old custom plan, task manager mostly shows 20% (0.8 GHz)). But other monitoring apps (hwmonitor for instance) shows, that minimum CPU frequency happens (infrequently). But maybe it's offtopic here.

What I'm trying to say is that I have a hard time believing that TC would trigger this on its own.

It's looks like TC causing Windows 10 to expose some bug with power management.

[ghisler(Author)]

It could be a problem with game mode. I remember that some years ago Total Commander was erroneously detected as a game, which made the XBox game bar appear when you opened Total Commander. This may also activate game mode. It doesn't happen on any of my systems, though.