Operating System: Windows Vista Business
CPU: Intel Q6600 Quad Core 2.4GHz
Graphics Card: NVidia 7950GX2 1gb 512-bit
Memory: 2GB DDR2
HardDrive: 320GB Sata (a secondary 80GB IDE Slave is also plugged in, but blank. It originally had XP on it.)
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3
Right, I think I listed all the important hardware there. My problem is that my computer stutters -- i.e. freezes for a split second at regular intervals. The stuttering is intermittent, and can happen no matter what im doing on the computer. This means i can be playing a game and the game will stutter (similar to when you have the graphics turned too high on a game and it jolts around) -- the sound will also stutter -- or i could leave it on the desktop with no applications running and it will present itself when i move the mouse. After this split second everything catches up. I don't usually notice it catching up since it's a split second, but when i paid attention i realised if i moved the mouse around in a circle on the desktop, it jumped rather than stopped and resumed from the same point it froze from.
Anyway enough of the problem, I'll tell you what I've done. Firstly, all the parts of the computer were bought and put together by me recently [august] (and I am by no means a computer technician!). The first thing i did was to make sure there was nothing foreign on my computer (e.g. viruses, spyware etc). I also ran through the processes to make sure nothing out of the ordinary was running, that nothing was chewing up ram and that the CPU wasn't being overused. When i couldnt' find a problem, I formatted my computer.
What I should also mention now is when this stuttering appeared, i noticed it also in Windows XP which i had at the time on my computer along with Vista. I had owned XP for perhaps a month or two before i installed Vista, and had never previously experienced this freezing. But i cannot tell for sure if it started happening the instant i upgraded.
Anyway, back to my "solutions". I formatted, installed Vista and chucked all my drivers and main programs back on (this includes MSN, Firefox browser, Itunes) and all my backed-up files. I left it on all day, using it every now and then, and the problem didn't present itself. I was proud. But i then left it on overnight, which is when it's almost 100% likely to present itself... and alas, it did in the morning.
Since then i have also reformatted, installed vista and JUST the motherboard drivers (and MSN, can't forget MSN) and have simply plugged my PC directly into the internet without installing the wireless or anything extra (even the graphics card driver). It didn't freeze all day, but i left it on overnight and it did. Quite a disappointment. This means that it is a hardware problem, no?
Unfortunately i have already been through my computer, taken everything out and put it back in again. I have also measured my CPU temperature at firstly an incorrect reading of 60'C (and therefore replaced the CPU fan and applied Arctic Silver 5 thermal grease, which made it even BETTER), then measured at a correct (with the Gigabyte motherboard program) reading of an average of about 38'C, so it's certainly not an issue of the CPU overheating, despite how gleeful i was at thinking i had found a solution.
So... oh dear.
Help is GREATLY appreciated, but dont ask:
1) to make sure the hardware is properly plugged in (since i don't know enough of the hardware to be certain everything is in the correct place, i will wait til i can get a friend over to look at it for me)
2) to install just XP and not Vista and see if the problem presents itself -- i will consider doing that a lot later, but i would seriously rather vista =P
All I'm looking for are alternate solutions to the 2 mentioned above, since they're ones I either can't do atm or ones i'd rather not do. Basically the only thing i can expect to be a problem is a possible hardware incompatibility issue or someone who remembers something similar which meant a piece of hardware had malfunctioned. Again, thankyou for any help.