You have done a load of work on this cpu bug. Maybe its time to accept that its there, and cannot be fixed. It must be 24H2 specific, as i used workshelf across all win 11 versions without issue, and older win 10 etc. Maybe the next 25H2 will be better.

I have to say, its been a massive miss not having Winstep. I have ended up using the old rocketdock for docks. I will keep checking back though.

Yep, a hell of a load of work Jorge has done on this. But heck, Win 11 is a pile of manure. I'd be surprised if Win 11 25H2 were to deliver a resolution to this, or for that matter to anything.

Simple solution - go back to Win 10, everything Winstep's working just fine, no issues.

Want to give a private beta a try and see if all the changes I made improved anything? Provided all your monitors have the same DPI, it will be fine (I still haven't finished adding support for per-monitor high DPI settings to the GUI, but other than that...)

i can try it, yes.

Ok, here are the links to the betas:

WARNING: These are updates and MUST be installed ON TOP of an EXISTING Nexus Ultimate v25.2 or Winstep Xtreme v25.2 installation.

DO NOT install these betas if you have multiple monitors running with different DPIs, work on adding per-monitor high DPI support is not finished yet.

To install the betas, download the relevant file for you from the links below then EXIT all running Winstep applications before running Setup.

Winstep Xtreme v25.6 BETA:

https://www.winstep.net/xtreme-beta.zip

Nexus Ultimate v25.6 BETA:

https://www.winstep.net/ultimate-beta.zip

Unfortunately it made no difference for my issue. I may decide to get a new PC in the near future. Thank you, for all the effort, trying to solve this, appreciated it.

Are you saying Workshelf CPU usage remained at 10%?

CPU was mostly sitting at 10% when i was monitoring it. For no reason i could see, it would drop to 6% and then randomly shoot up to 17%. It did this when idle and in use.

Hold on... you mean *total* CPU usage, not just CPU usage for the Workshelf process, right? Total will not pinpoint the culprit.

Because otherwise something is not adding up: if you have a 6 core (12 threads) CPU with WorkShelf being single-threaded the maximum it could ever use in your system would be 100/12 = 8.3% (and that would be 100% usage of a single core).

Since you are running Winstep Xtreme, do you have the desktop CPU module open? Depending on the theme (Darktech allows this), it will show the top two processes using the most of your CPU (which would enable you to see how much WorkShelf is using if it is indeed using that much)

Otherwise check the Details tab of the Windows Task Manager and see how much CPU is workshelf.exe using (unfortunately Task Manager will only give you an integer number)

winstep extreme cpu module is sitting at 9.3% for workshelf.

update:-

I'm so stupid, old age. I used the specs from my original PC, which died on me. So used an older PC. This is why. So basically i need a new PC

Could you please send me a screenshot of the Most Active Programs dialog (right click the CPU meter module -> Most Active Programs) ?

edited post above. Once you mentioned specs the hammer fell.

And how many cores does your current system have?

Anyway, just tried running the new beta build on a Windows 10 VM with TWO (2!) CPU cores (2 threads, no HT) available to it. With all desktop modules open, the dock showing running tasks and Wanda swimming on the desktop (like I have WorkShelf running on my main system), WorkShelf's CPU usage when idle most of the time did not even register in the top two and occasionally would rise up to 1.6% - 2.4% (so with only two cores that is 3.2% - 4.8% of a single core).

Now compare that to the reported 1.8% it sometimes uses on my Windows 11 system for prolonged periods of time on a 16 core/24 threads CPU (12900K): that is 43.2% of a single core when it should be 4.8% at the most as it is on Windows 10! All things being equal, WorkShelf reported CPU usage when idle on my Windows 11 system should be no higher than 0.2%! Yet it is 9 times higher than that.

The only difference is the OS version. As if this was some kind of news, Windows 11 is completely broken!

This is coming up as 2 core, 4 threads.

Some change they made in this 24H2 is the issue. Ran all previous releases on Win 10 and 11 without issue. So going down a new pc route, is probably the right decision.

So that 9.3% in a 4 thread CPU is equivalent to using 37.2% of a single core. So about the same as the 43% of a single core I get here.



24H2 is the issue no doubt, but it must be also related to *something* WorkShelf is doing. You don't see those kind of values in NextSTART, for instance.

I still haven't given up on figuring out what exactly might be causing this (in what concerns WorkShelf, of course). The fact that CPU usage fluctuates so wildly when idle for long periods of time doesn't help (sometimes it will keep at about 1.8%, other times it will keep at 0.2% or less, with nothing changed in the application's configuration).