Frame rate stutter - help needed from clever people please

[Lurtz 86]

Hi all. This isn't a bug report - just a cry for help!

I have played F1 games in many guises so I know the need to have a PC capable of doing the job (which I have) and have never had any issues with stuttering frame rates until recently. About 2 weeks ago I decided to leap into the world of VR and bought an Oculus Quest 2. The following week was taken up playing Star Wars Squadrons in VR. I then realised that I needed to get back into F1 2020 to make sure I got to Tier 30 before Podium Pass timed out and it was at this point I started to get a problem with stuttering frame rates. It can occur at intervals of 2 up to 20 minutes and makes driving impossible. 

I set up Task Master in Performance mode and also opened up the Resource Monitor to try and identify the culprit and what I found was that every time the game was effected by frame stutter a programme called 'dasHost' was causing the Ethernet graph to max out at over 1Mbps for a period of 5 to 10 seconds. I googled dasHost but, other than finding that it was a genuine Windows programme that can't be deleted, I didn't really understand what it did or if it (as it would seem) has any connection with all the Oculus and associated VR software that I loaded.

I know that there are people out there who know this computer tech stuff really well and I am just hoping someone can give me some advice. I have managed to blunder my way through Practice and Qualifying for this Weekend's event in Brazil but there is no way I can survive a 25% distance race without the stutter crashing me out.

[steviejay69 1,145]

My main suggestion would be to remove any 3rd party AV from Windows and just use Windows Defender.

That's Occam's razor for you.

[Lurtz 86]

Thanks @steviejay69 but this time Occam needs to look for a new razor! Tell him to take out a subscription to 'Harry's'. 😊

 I did follow your advice and removed Avast but that didn't change anything so I delved deeper into Google and found a thread relating to the exact same issue in an Elite Dangerous forum. There, the issue was solved by writing a new Network 'Outbound' rule in Defender, blocking dasHost. I tried this and it seems to have worked, having just completed 2 hours plus game time without any issues. Whether the rule creates issues elsewhere on my Network I'll just have to wait and see and, to be honest, I have recently remembered that at about the time I installed all the Quest and VR software, I also installed a new printer on my network so that could have also been a contributing factor.

Edited November 12, 2020 by Lurtz

[steviejay69 1,145]

4 hours ago, Lurtz said:

Thanks @steviejay69 but this time Occam needs to look for a new razor! Tell him to take out a subscription to 'Harry's'. 😊

 I did follow your advice and removed Avast but that didn't change anything so I delved deeper into Google and found a thread relating to the exact same issue in an Elite Dangerous forum. There, the issue was solved by writing a new Network 'Outbound' rule in Defender, blocking dasHost. I tried this and it seems to have worked, having just completed 2 hours plus game time without any issues. Whether the rule creates issues elsewhere on my Network I'll just have to wait and see and, to be honest, I have recently remembered that at about the time I installed all the Quest and VR software, I also installed a new printer on my network so that could have also been a contributing factor.

Kudos for the humour. I'll take the free trial 🙂