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Severe performance impact of SmartSystemMenu on taskmanager #131

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Severe performance impact of SmartSystemMenu on taskmanager#131

Description

@sebthom
sebthom
opened on May 29, 2024

When SmartSystemMenu is running opening the TaskManager and going to the Details tab makes the task manager freeze for some seconds.
Scrolling in the Details list becomes very sluggish.
When I try grab the title bar of the task manager window with the mouse and move the window around the movement stutters.

I already added taskmgr.exe to process exclusion but it makes no difference.

The moment I stop SmartSystemMenu the TaskManager behaves snappy again.

I am using a relatively powerful laptop with AMD Ryzen 7 Pro 7840U and 64GB of RAM and Windows 10.0.19045.4412 and SmartSystemMenu 2.26.1

I don't know if it is the same cause like for #107 but I currently only experience the issue with the task manager.

I am using SmartSystemMenu already for quite some time and haven't noticed this issue before, so maybe something changed in the last releases that results in the performance degradation.

Activity

  1. AlexanderPro commented on May 30, 2024

    @AlexanderPro
    AlexanderPro
    on May 30, 2024
    Owner

    Hi @sebthom,

    If you have the opportunity, could you compare versions 2.26.1 and 2.22.0

  2. sebthom commented on May 31, 2024

    @sebthom
    sebthom
    on May 31, 2024
    ContributorAuthor

    I could not reproduce the issue with any release using the default config. So I checked what I changed.
    So for me when I add explorer.exe or taskmgr.exe to the processExclusions list things get slow.
    Adding explorer.exe results in a 2 second freeze when closing the taskmanager and adding taskmgr.exe to the exclusion list, then the taskmanager's details and services views became very slow.

    So maybe you can reproduce it with:

      <processExclusions>
    <processName>slack.exe</processName>
    <processName>dllhost.exe</processName>
    <processName>sihost.exe</processName>
    <processName>code.exe</processName>
    <processName>smartscreen.exe</processName>
    <processName>explorer.exe</processName>
    <processName>taskmgr.exe</processName>
  </processExclusions>

    The issue is the same with 2.22.0 now but as I said before I am only noticing the issue since a few weeks.

  3. AlexanderPro commented on Jun 1, 2024

    @AlexanderPro
    AlexanderPro
    on Jun 1, 2024
    Owner

    I think, I have reproduced the issue. Thank you.

  4. sebthom commented on Jul 10, 2025

    @sebthom
    sebthom
    on Jul 10, 2025
    ContributorAuthor

    @AlexanderPro did you find any solution?

  5. AlexanderPro
    added a commit that references this issue on Aug 21, 2025

    Issues #131 Issues #168 Attempt to fix the performance issue

    f70ae41
  6. AlexanderPro
    added a commit that references this issue on Sep 5, 2025

    Issues #131 Added "ignoreHook" attribute to the "processName" element…

    786183b

  7. AlexanderPro commented on Sep 7, 2025

    @AlexanderPro
    AlexanderPro
    on Sep 7, 2025
    Owner

    @sebthom,

    I managed to reproduce the issue. The reason is in the explorer.exe process, it loads hooks a little differently and if there is a cancellation it tries to do the loading again constantly. In general, it is difficult to somehow influence this process. Therefore, I would recommend downloading the latest version 2.32.0 and adding the following lines to the processExclusions section of the SmartSystemMenu.xml file:

    <processName ignoreHook="true">explorer.exe</processName>
<processName ignoreHook="true">taskmgr.exe</processName>
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