Random pc lag, help plz!

D

Dr3xus

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PC is about 1yr old

E4600 + Foxconn 45cmx Mobo
1gb ddr 663
7600GT
Windows xp sps3

From time to time during games (which were running perfectly before), my pc would spike to around 1 - 10fps making everything very unplayable. I have also noticed that alt tabbing out the game takes A LOT longer than before (sometimes up to 30 - 40 seconds where previously it was instant).

Now I know I don't have the most high end pc, but I am talking about old games (a la Warcraft 3).

So far what I have done is.
1) Up to date kaspersky -> full virus scan
2) Defragged disk
3) Ran RAMTEST for around 30hrs (no errors)
4) Ran CPU test (3 different ones) for >24hrs
5) Swapped Graphics cards (to a brand new 8800GT)
6) Ran pc off onboard graphics (to make sure it was not the pci-e slot that was bust)
7) Updated/Rolled back graphics card drivers.

etc etc etc :(
Nothing seems to help :/

any suggestions/advice?
 
Could it be that your AV is scanning during startup and the game, thereby causing the lag...perhaps?
 
Sounds like something is trying to read the hard drive and that is causing the system to hang, or slow down. Perhaps try disabling the HDD sleep (when you play a game the system pages files, when you alt-tab it tries to retrieve the files but has to wait for the disk to spin up). Also try run perfmon (start > run > perfmon), and then monitor the first two counters, pages/second and disk queue; what do those two do when the system gets slow; perhaps you need more RAM??
 
Check the timing between when it happens, if its the same then its something trying to update or do something. Usually when I play games I press control alt delete and end any unnecessary processes and end up with 16 running processes, the essential ones. I close Firefox as well because it loves using a lot of memory, and I had Newsfox installed which refreshed feeds every 20 minutes and in so doing made the game I was playing terribly slow for 30-60s. Dropped Newsfox for Omea, works perfectly.
 
Thanks for all the advice guys.

AV is set to manual scan, just double checked again. Windows updates are also off. This "lag" spike occurs both online and offline (sometimes when just trying to alt tab from FF3 to IRC).


Sounds like something is trying to read the hard drive and that is causing the system to hang, or slow down. Perhaps try disabling the HDD sleep
Click to expand...

Without trying to sound too noob (guess it's too late for that :P), how would I go about doing that? "Turn off Harddisk" under power scheme is set to never if that is what you are referring to. I have also run spyware doctor without finding anything on the scan, so don't think it is that. With regards to processes, currently I have around 33 processes running. 18 of which is system/local service and of the 15 or so that are run by me I have things such as daemon tools, bandwith monitor, AV, sometimes IRC, software for my wireless mouse.

The processes (run by me) that looked suspicious include:
mmc.exe, wscntf.exe, RTHDCPL.EXE, KHALMNPR.EXE, avp.exe, rundll32.exe, ctfmon.exe although I am pretty sure I have googled all of them, but listening them in case something does look fishy.

Thanks again for all the help.
 
hehe, just as I was about to post this "random update" :P
I just checked temperature in bios (pc has been running for at least 24hrs).

CPU - 33 celsius
System - 23 celsius

whenever my pc "lags" the first thing I usually do is dust it off on the inside. It's not perfect but my heat sinks/dust fans should be relatively dust free. Trying to avoid the (inevitable) format.
 
I have done the perfmon but haven't had time to "make it lag" (involves playing a game for round an hour :P). Currently running Grabit, FF3 and IRC and within each cycle it (page/sec and avg disk queue) spikes to max abt 3 - 4 times.

I will "make it lag" later and post what the graph looks like then. Thanks again. gonna try the hddscan now.
 
Well done.

Is your HDD LED working? Check if you can see if it is working "overtime" when "you make it lag"
 
Dr3xus said:
I have done the perfmon but haven't had time to "make it lag" (involves playing a game for round an hour :P). Currently running Grabit, FF3 and IRC and within each cycle it (page/sec and avg disk queue) spikes to max abt 3 - 4 times.

I will "make it lag" later and post what the graph looks like then. Thanks again. gonna try the hddscan now.
Click to expand...

There is no max; just an average ;-) Disk queue should be no higher than 1/Physical disk (sustained average). Post the graph that you have??
 
Clickity!

thought when it hit "100" it was max :P my bad?
like I've said previously, haven't made it lag yet so will try obtain a graph of when it lags later tonight and post. This graph was taken whilst running 1 dl through FF3 and running irc nothing else spectacular.
 
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