Why DU Meter reports "service data stale"?

DU Meter reports "service data is stale" when it detects that the DU Meter service that collects network traffic statistics hasn't updated its data for a while. If you see this error message only briefly, it probably means that your computer was busy doing something else, and therefore DU Meter service had no chance to update its data. Once it catches up, the error message disappears by itself. There is nothing to be concerned about.

However, if you see this error and it does not go away, it means that DU Meter service has encountered a serious error and cannot continue. There are several known possible reasons for this:

  1. If you have just upgraded DU Meter to a new version, a very small minority of users have reported that DU Meter service failed to re-register itself properly during re-install. We suggest you uninstall DU Meter, reboot and install it once again. Reboot is essential here, please do not skip this step.

  2. Recently, we are seeing many clients infected by a virus or worm that disables Windows Firewall and Base Filtering Engine (BFE) service. DU Meter depends on BFE for its operation, and if this Windows service is disabled or deleted, you'll see "BFE service is not running" or "service data is stale" error in DU Meter. Please read our blog post about BFE disappearance for more information.

Common issues