Windows 10: Video Freeze Randomly Occurs When Earphone inserted into Laptop Jack

This problem occurred for the first time since newest WINDOWS 64bit 1809 OS update about a week ago which is significant.

Quick background: new HP ProBook laptop; Windows 64 OS clean install. When playing any video stream via Wi-Fi (such as youtube, etc.) and while stream is playing in browser, plug in the earphone and video stream freezes most of the time.

All drivers the latest, OS the latest, clean system.

Here is the background story that I composed to HP to suggest that either the Audio driver company, or Microsoft OS developers have an issue where the OS overloads and fails to keep up with the video stream and freezes the stream. They took my complaint and pass it to the engineering team. HP also asked me to alert Microsoft to this issue.


Re: HP ProBook 470G5 video freeze issue
Here is a recap of specific actions and tests that I ran in the last 24 hours.

1. Factory reset the system - nothing left on the hard drive but new OS.

2. WINDOWS 10 64 bit OS loaded and came up fine.

3. I created a restore point BEFORE the license was enabled. Why? Just in case everything worked, I wanted a safe retreat as my starting point, because Microsoft will not do any updates until the license is valid.

4. Ran video tests and the video froze randomly when the pin plug was inserted into the earphone connection. PROBLEM EXISTS AT THIS POINT IN TESTING.

5. I then enabled the license and observed that the Microsoft OS that was created is a new 2019 release. If I did this a year ago, there would be hours of OS updates to get current. What I saw was only the latest update that combined 1709, 1803 and 1809 windows OS updates. Plus two malicious software updates. It was under ten minutes to get totally current.

6. Since the OS was so new, it would explain that this unit has all the newest software and drivers that HP expects for the proBook 470G.

7. I then wanted to insure that every HP driver on your website for 2019 was installed on the laptop just in case there was something that was corrected, but I didn’t get the newest driver.

8. Conexant HD Driver sp95015 2/12/19

9. Intel Management Engine sp93335 1/3/19

10. Intel video driver sp94579 1/18/19


　

11. Realtek RTL wireless LAN sp94889 1/30/19

12. Intel rapid storage sp95131 2/20/19

13. HP universal camera driver sp95071 1/19/19

14. HP client security management sp94604 1/27/19

15. HP firmware pack 2/1/19 (upgraded BIOS two days earlier)

16. Realtek USB Pcie Media sp 94887 2/15/19

17. Essential Windows Updates sp94867 1/29/19


18. So why does Microsoft Video Player work and not freeze with the pin plug in and out? Answer? The Microsoft Video player was playing a video file that was on my hard drive. (did not require Wi-Fi stream into laptop) Why is this important? Since Wi-Fi wasn’t in the stream and using CPU time to manage, the system didn’t overload and stop video processing output to handle audio driver interrupts.

19. To prove this, I went to the system utilization page of the task manager I saw the following important facts.

20. Whenever the stereo pin-plug is inserted into the jack, there is a big spike of CPU usage, and spike in the Wi-Fi utilization. Meaning, that when video is streaming in from Wi-Fi, the utilization of processor is 10-30% typical to above 50%, and Wi-Fi utilization is running at bandwidth capacity, so WI-FI really peaks when the pin-plug is inserted into the jack and can randomly choke with the incoming stream and CPU overhead caused by inserting the pin-plug.

21. To see this even more clearly. Do not use any video stream, but simply open the TASK app and look at Wi-Fi utilization when the pin-plug is pushed in and pulled out. If the pin-plug is pushed in read-quick, CPU runs above 50% but Wi-Fi really spikes to 100%. If the pin-plug is pushed in as normal people would push it about ½ - 1 second, the probability of video freeze is very high because the Wi-Fi is handling video stream, plus the spike from the sound driver (or whatever interface driver is handling the earphone jack.)

22. This also suggests that the Conexant audio driver is a good place to fix the problem because it is very likely causing a flood of CPU and Wi-Fi utilization because the processor thinks that the pin plug is connecting and disconnecting a number of times within a fraction of a second. To explain how this "connect and disconnect" might happen multiple times within a fraction of a second.

I recall a program that I wrote to capture TOUCH-TONES on a phone. It turns out that most of us think that when we push a TOUCH-TONE button, it records digit 1 one time. The evidence showed that some phones with various contacts that might have a slight tarnish, and think digit 1 is pressed two, three, four, or five times, before the connection was settled to a fully pressed position within a 100 milliseconds. To resolve this, I added a piece of code that said, "If this change stays the same after ten 10ms samples that total 100 ms, then I will send the CPU one interrupt to record the DIGIT 1. However, if the software sees any change between push or no-push in the next ten 10ms samples of time, I’ll reset the button sample count to zero and wait until I get the same ten count of PUSH before I send the CPU a message that a One DIGIT was recorded. So, if the button appears to open and close a number of times until it was fully pressed, then it had up to ten time samples of 10ms each before the software was convinced the press was done and then sent one interrupt to the CPU to log the digit.

23. OK: let’s translate this idea to the HP earphone jack. When I push the earplug into the jack very quickly, I notice that it is very hard to freeze the video because the change from no-earplug to earplug inserted occurs so quickly there is little or no bounce in making that connection. If however, I slowly insert the plug, the video freezes almost every time. In my opinion, all this is evidence of an overload of CPU and Wi-Fi utilization occurring just by inserting a 1/8 pin plug, that has the unfortunately by-product of freezing the video stream because the hardware can’t keep up with the rapid change of "connect disconnect" CPU interrupts.

24. In summary, the youtube.com phenomenon is not really the heart of the problem, but rather it just produces the video stream via Wi-Fi.

25. My investigation shows that a video stream from any source coming in to the Wi-Fi channel, during the time the 1/8 pin plug is going into the jack, is randomly going to fail, due to high CPU utilization and Wi-Fi utilization.

26. To further underscore this relationship, there were a few times that I noticed the video freeze and then the video recovers with a jump in the picture just after the pin plug is installed. That implies that the video had just enough time to get back in sync without stopping altogether.
27. All this evidence supports my theory that CPU and Wi-Fi is overloaded when inserting an ear plug. This should have been a simple audio shift from speakers to headphones and really not impacting the CPU and Wi-Fi. So be it, the designers incorporated the function as it is, so it stands to reason that removing the "bounce of connects disconnects" will really help to alleviate this video freeze issue.

28. By the way, this evidence also matches the fact that I saw a new Conexant driver installed on the very day when all this began at the same download time with a Microsoft OS upgrade. Again, the audio driver upgrade does support why this issue just appeared right after the upgrade. Of course, Microsoft may also be involved by overloaded interrupts.

29. One final note. Whenever the pin-plug cable is removed, I have never seen a problem of video freeze. It is only on the insert of the pin-plug cable. That also supports the theory, that people pull a cable out much faster than they insert a cable, so the chance of bounce "connect and disconnect" does not occur to affect any CPU overload.


Based on all these observations, I must ask "If HP tech support has seen this problem from anyone else? If not, and no other problems get logged, then I would venture to say that this HP laptop has some hardware issue in the sound section of the laptop." If other people are having this problem, then it is a design issue that I suggest be forwarded to the Conexant audio driver designers as the best place, in my opinion, to address this issue.

Any Microsoft solutions or testing ideas to capture this issue are also appreciated.


:)

 

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