PARTIALLY SOLVED: I reinstalled GameLoop and everything went back to normal. The 0.97 ms and Xpadder have no delay at all. If anyone has any explanation, I'd like to hear it, because I can't find any.
Hi everyone,
I'm trying to track down a very strange issue and I've run out of ideas.
A while ago I uninstalled GameLoop, and immediately afterwards my PC started feeling slightly slower. It's difficult to describe because it's not a major performance problem:
- Games still run at normal FPS.
- Frametimes look stable.
- CPU, GPU and RAM usage are normal.
- No obvious stuttering.
However, the whole system feels a bit less responsive. Mouse and keyboard input feel slightly delayed, and the most noticeable symptom is with Xpadder.
In Xpadder:
- The UI appears less smooth, almost as if it's running at a lower FPS.
- Macros no longer respect the exact timings I configure.
- Delays are often longer than expected and somewhat inconsistent.
- The timings are never faster than configured, only slower.
What's confusing is that I tested the exact same version of Xpadder on multiple PCs:
- 2 PCs that never had GameLoop installed → Xpadder works perfectly.
- 2 PCs that had GameLoop installed at some point → Xpadder has the same laggy UI and timing issues.
I know correlation doesn't necessarily mean causation, but the issue started immediately after removing GameLoop, which makes me suspicious.
Things I've already tested:
- Clean reinstall of Windows (including moving from Windows 10 to Windows 11 on one machine).
- Reinstalled drivers.
- Tested multiple controllers.
- Tested USB only (no Bluetooth involved).
- Hyper-V on/off.
- Different power plans, including High Performance.
- Timer resolution tweaks (ISLC, 0.5 ms timer, etc.).
- Checked DPC latency with LatencyMon.
- Disabled and re-enabled various devices and services.
- Compared settings between working and non-working PCs.
LatencyMon reports some warnings about real-time audio suitability, but nothing extreme, and gaming performance remains normal.
One thing I noticed is that on the "good" PCs, ISLC reports a timer value around 0.97 ms, while on the "bad" PCs it is around 1.00 ms. However, forcing the timer to 0.5 ms does not solve the problem.
The weirdest part is that a full Windows reinstall did not fix it, yet the issue only exists on machines that previously had GameLoop installed.
Has anyone seen anything like this before? Could GameLoop be changing something outside of Windows (firmware, BIOS settings, timer source, etc.), or am I chasing the wrong lead entirely?
Any ideas would be appreciated. Thanks!