I've been trying to get my system tweaked since upgrading to Windows 10, and a Focusrite tech had me install Latency Monitor.  I'm getting some hard page faults and trying to resolve the problem.  I'm using Sonar Platinum with a Focusrite 18i20 USB interface, on a desktop computer with an Intel i7 3.4 GHz cpu with 16 GB RAM.  I have three SATA internal hard drives installed and have moved the page file to a drive that is different from the one the operating system is installed on, and different from the one my audio files are on.  I've set the page file to 16384 min/max to that Windows doesn't constantly resize it.  For the latency test I am playing back my most taxing project that I'm mixing.  Can anyone advise me on getting this issue resolved?
Thanks.

I got it sorted out.  The main culprit was Logitech Setpoint software, which caused the vast majority of hard page faults.  After I exited the program and disabled it at startup, there were still a few dozen page faults occurring over 5 minutes.  That was stopped by turning off Windows Defender.  Now I had 1 hard page fault in 5 minutes.

Is Sonar and Windows and all other drivers up to current highest maintenance levels?
 
Also, have a look at the Windows Event Viewer and look for critical error messages that correspond to the date and time of these page faults.
 
Is your memory good?  (you can create a disc to run a freeware program called Memtest from memtest.org, that will exercise your memory sticks in a series of tests if you boot up from a disc with the memtest program burned as a bootable ISO image - simple to download, to burn, and to boot up and run it, and it may help shed light on your issues - IF they are related to memory.
 
Another thing to look at - check the AVAILABLE memory and make sure Windows is showing close to the whole 16 GB of data - there is a condition where Windows ends up showing a bunch of memory as unavailable as Hardware Reserved.  I had it where I had 32 GB installed, and Windows detected all of it, BUT almost 16 GB was unavailable - THAT was pretty weird.  IF this is happening to you, please post back with that info, and I will find the fix for that for you.
 
Bob Bone
 

Thanks Bob.  I'll run the tests and check the available RAM and let you know if I need more information.

Bob - I ran 3 passes of MemTest and there were no errors.  The available RAM is correct, showing about 14.5 GB available out of 16GB.  I think the hard page faults were caused by the Setpoint software and Windows Defender.

I've seen Setpoint cause lots of page faults and PCI bus latency in the past. Fortunately Logitech's trackballs work fine using just the generic Windows mouse driver, so I uninstalled it. That was two or three years ago, not installed it since so I don't know if whatever the current version is behaves any better.

By the sounds of it it doesn't.

As for Memtest, when I put together my previous DAW and installed Vista it blue screened repeatedly, I forget the error code but it pointed at bad RAM. So I ran Memtest for over 72 hours solid. No errors reported. I formatted the HDD and put on fresh Windows install, rebooted and..... blue screen.

Replacing the RAM fixed the issue. It seems Vista was a more effective, efficient and brutal RAM tester than Memtest :-/

I wonder why MemTest didn't catch the problem?  Is there a better memory test I should run?
 
My system runs fine now, so I don't think I'll change anything.  I did price 32 GB (4x8GB) of RAM.  I could get some decent RAM for about $150, but at the moment it doesn't seem necessary.
 
After disabling Setpoint from starting with Windows, and turning off Windows Defender, I haven't had any hard page faults.  With Setpoint running, I had 27,000 in about 5 minutes, according to Latency Monitor.

Well, from the web:
 
"Hard page faults occur when a program needs data that isn't resident in physical RAM, and so Windows has to read it in from the paging file, instead. This is a time-consuming business, and so if a process is generating a lot of hard page faults during audio playback then it might result in dropouts."
 
I did see a bunch of what looked like a bunch of reported cases in Windows of Logitech Setpoint causing oodles of hard page faults, so it might be wise to try out the Microsoft drivers instead for your mouse.
 
Bob Bone
 
 
 
 

Yes, the Microsoft driver works, but has higher latency than the Logitech driver.  As long as the Setpoint software isn't running, I'm not getting the page faults.  I can run it if I need to adjust settings, then close it.  The problem was that when I installed it, it put itself in the Windows startup folder and was starting with Windows and running in the background.  Once I disabled it from startup, the page faults stopped.  Device Manager still shows the Logitech driver being used.

Yes, it seems to he the Setpoint application rather than the driver which causes the problems, I've found exactly the same thing.

I think Setpoint sits in the background constantly poking the system and enquiring if any of it's special functions have been triggered. Which they almost certainly haven't, especially on the two-button basic trackball I use. I just uninstalled the whole thing and as far as Windows is concerned my trackball is just a generic mouse.