do you have this problem?

[SeraphimLeftNut]

This is a survey to see how many people experience this issue:
Get process monitor here: https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals
Run FA and see if FA keeps on looking for this registry key:
HKLM\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\APL

Looks like this issue also happened long time ago: http://forums.gaspowered.com/viewtopic.php?t=7428

And at least two people have this issue today.

[Axle]

Can confirm that my FA spams this key about 10 times per second while in game.

But can also confirm that SupComMark score with and without /nosound option are virtually the same ... so for me its a non-issue.

With /nosound:
Logged frames : 16509
SupComMark (sim) : 10000
SupComMark (render) : 8187
SupComMark (composite) : 18187

With /nosound
Logged frames : 16189
SupComMark (sim) : 10000
SupComMark (render) : 8136
SupComMark (composite) : 18136

[-_V_-]

WEll the perftest map is no really reliable somehow

[rxnnxs]

yes, its not finding many things.. and this is happening to me also

[SeraphimLeftNut]

Can confirm that my FA spams this key about 10 times per second while in game.

But can also confirm that SupComMark score with and without /nosound option are virtually the same ... so for me its a non-issue.

With /nosound:
Logged frames : 16509
SupComMark (sim) : 10000
SupComMark (render) : 8187
SupComMark (composite) : 18187

With /nosound
Logged frames : 16189
SupComMark (sim) : 10000
SupComMark (render) : 8136
SupComMark (composite) : 18136

Redo the tests while zooming in and out of a massive battle. You can get zero difference if you kill all units.

[Axle]

The APL registry key is related to dsound / xactengine. Zooming in and out of large battles isn't related to sound.

The guys in that gpgnet thread were able to demonstrate by using the perftest map that sound (and therefore possibly the APL key access) was an issue for them. The same perftest on my machine indicates that sound has no significant impact on performance.

Thats good enough for me. Its a non-issue (for me)

[TheDarkOne]

With the help of SeraphimLeftNut and mr_ped I've created a fix for the APL key spam. It's in the form of a dll and a dll injector application. The dll installs a detour on the RegQueryValueExA function imported from Advapi32.dll and blocks all calls where lpSubKey == _T("SOFTWARE\\Microsoft\\APL") by returning 0x2. This completely stops the spam.

What effect this has on performance is unknown.

I've reported this fix to Sheeo who now has the source code. A better solution is going to be made from my prototype and if it succeeds it might be implemented into FAF.

I don't think I will share the fix here for a number of reasons but mainly because I think SeraphimLeftNut thinks one of my files were infected with something. While I know this is not true there is nothing I can do to prove it really. So to avoid that happening again I'm going with this for now. Hoping he will get his PC sorted out ASAP.