Sorting in Task manager is extremely slow.

Anonymous
2021-09-02T02:26:24+00:00

Task manager sorting is extremely slow when I switch from sorting by name to performance metrics or vice versa.

For example - I can sort by name and if after that I decide to sort by one of the performance metrics - it's going to take about 3 seconds to do so. After that - I can freely sort by any of the performance metrics and I will experience no lag, unless I try to sort by the name again. In which case I will see another lag, also about 3 seconds. And from this point the cycle repeats.

I have had this issue before - the only resolution I have found - was to reinstall the windows, but it's not a solution I find sustainable.

TLDR

Sorting by CPU takes 3 seconds, after that, sorting by name takes 3 seconds, if I try to sort by CPU again - I will get another lag of the similar duration.

What can be done about it?

Windows for home | Windows 10 | Performance and system failures

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  1. Anonymous
    2023-03-18T03:16:25+00:00

    I also experienced this and was able to track it down (in my case).

    I started turning off active services and discovered that after turning off a bunch of services the mouse, keyboard or USB input lag stopped completely.

    The sorting delay stills occurs when selecting the process tab in task manager, but after the above there was no longer any effect on input even with high disk utilization due to backups, nvidia scans, etc.

    I started first disabling Microsoft Windows processes one at a time looking for a culprit to no avail.

    I then worked through all second party services. I finally alighted on my Meta / Oculus services causing the issue even with all devices disconnected.

    After that I could reproduce the issue by turning the Oculus service on and off.

    I suspect that the HID I/O being used by the Oculus service (in my case) is being affected by taskmanager scans during process enumeration.

    It is a Windows problem ultimately.

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  2. Anonymous
    2023-01-29T17:12:30+00:00

    This unfortunately only solves the case where you're changing the column to sort (so by CPU, by memory, or by name), but changing between tabs is still very laggy.

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  3. Anonymous
    2022-06-01T01:10:07+00:00

    This got so much worse over time. When I start the task manager, it takes about 10-15 seconds to launch it and everything is frozen, even mouse cursor. I was forced to replace the task manager with process explorer.

    Microsoft, please, get this sorted.

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  4. Anonymous
    2022-01-19T09:44:15+00:00

    I have also tried Windows Sandbox and the Task Manager in it works ok. However I was able, last evening, to improve the speed of my Task Manager by updating my AMD drivers using the auto-detect tool at https://www.amd.com/en/support

    Mouse lag when sorting the columns is gone, and time to sort is down to ~2 seconds from 5+.

    However I still have mouse lag when opening the Task Manager the first time after a reboot.

    The drivers I had to update were:

    Image

    Windows Update still shows I have the following outdated drivers, which I'll try to update:

    Image

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  5. Anonymous
    2022-10-21T20:44:19+00:00

    Same here on my last 3 PC. Both on Win 10 and Win 11. Now it's worse, it even can be 10-15 sec to sort.

    6700k 32GB DDR4 Samsung 970 Pro

    Alienware R13 12900k 64GB DDR5 Samsung 980 Pro 1TB

    Custom build: 12900k 64GB DDR5 2x Samsung 980 Pro 1TB

    Obviously, this is not a hardware problem guys, and it's been here more than 2 years now.

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