Dell Dock - constant 6-12% CPU usage

What settings do you change to make it drop?  Do you have animations set?

Zargon

Hi robacz,

Just wondering what the settings of your dock are...

Do you have it set to autohide? If not, do you have it set to bring itself to the front when the mouse nears the edge? Which edge is the dock on... the same edge as another bar/taskbar, or some other otherwise-uninhabited edge? Do you have a multimonitor system? And if so the dock isn't on an edge that boarders another monitor is it?

Regardings effects/color, what color is your dock set to? "Glass", "Default/black", or some custom color? And which effect do you have in use, the default "grow" effect, or the "swing" or "glow" effects? Is the dock "Locked" or in "Touch Mode"? (All of these settings are viewable from the settings panel in the dock)

Finally, do you have enough items on your dock where it needs scroll-arrows? Or does it all fit nicely on the screen.

Sorry for all the question, but have no idea exactly why it would take that much CPU and so trying to get enough information to perhaps get a picture! Thank you.

Hello,

to answer Zargon's question - basically any change I make will result in temporary no CPU usage, but for no apparent reason it goes back to previous levels in few minutes. I have seen similiar behaviour reported on Dell customer forums...

JMB1984, yes my Dock is set to autohide, but it is same without autohide. Yes it is (was) se to go to the front when mouse is close to edge. The Dock is on the top, taskbar is on the bottom. I have only one screen, the laptop's main.

Dock is set to color named "Vista (Default)" (it is black), partial transparency is enabled. I am using grow effect, but I tried the other ones with no effect. Lock and touch modes are disabled. At this moment it doesn't have to scroll, it fits to the screen.

I will try to change these settings you mentioned and report back if I can reduce the CPU usage somehow.

Thanks for replies.

I have the same problem with the cpu usage for the dell dock version 1.05B.   2 days ago i had version 1.0 but it did not display this behaviour.  (But the application was cancelling often).

The DellDock consume between 7 and 15% constantly.  When I changed a setting (moving it to the side for example) it will stop for a while.  But it is only temporary.

Why would such a small application consume cpu constantly?.  Is there a solution to this pattern?

The parameters are:

-       Location on top that hide when i work on another application.  (Option “bring to top when mouse nears edge” is on)

-       Color is Vista default, (Black)

Thank you for your help

Same issue here. 

7-13% cpu usage. Seems pretty excessive for an idle application. It's very cool, but that's too high for me.

Any ideas or is there an update?

Hello again,

I did some testing and there are two Dell Dock options, that will always remove any CPU usage: the dock position and touch-mode. When these settings are changed (doesn't matter which way) the CPU usage goes to zero and also memory usage stops rising. Sometimes it will last until the next reboot, sometimes the CPU usage comes back even before restart (it is always there after I reboot though).

I also noticed, that memory usage is slowly rising when the Dell Dock is using my CPU. Obviously, the application is doing something, but I have no idea what.

As far as I can tell, I always had this problem, even after a clean Vista x64 install, so I think the cause shouldn't be any of my other applications. It is pretty standard set too: Comodo Internet Security, Google Talk and Rainlendar. Nother else (besides drivers, Epson printer app and Anydata cdma modem app) is running after startup.

EDIT: DellDock.com site says " Windows® 7 support is coming October 22nd", so maybe there is an update coming in few days. I will have my fingers crossed.

Hi again,

the new version released on www.delldock.com website fixed the problem for me. The Dock is now eacefully sitting in the background with zero CPU usage.

The website identifies the new version as 1.5d, but the Dock itself says 2.0.

Hope it helps.

EDIT: I take it back, after few reboots, the CPU usage is back even with this new version. I have no idea what can be causing this...