Stupid Systems Slow Stuttering Sillyness

[midgetunderfire]

Hi all from a noobie to the forum

 

:cool:

 

Heres one for you - for the last few months my PC has begun to slow down, specifically to 'stutter' - not like traditional PC slowness, here you get jerky mouse movements across the screen and any audio playing in the background stutters and makes a noise like when Neo first gets unplugged in Matrix I. Not pleasant, great way to spoil Debussy. During these 'stutters', the CPU usage spikes sometimes to 100ish % on the task manager. Several other exe's and bits and pieces spike too, but it still doesnt quite add up to the total usage. System and System Interupts also spike on the Resource Manager.

 

This seems to begin to creep in about 30 mins after logon, and gets progressively worse over a few hours until the PC is finally unusable.

 

Now, the reason I've posted it in this part of the forum, is because whilst the problem will happen regardless of any apparent internet usage, the activity that seems to really spark up and agitate the problem is any sort of internet usage, particularilly just plain old browsing. Both IE and FF have caused it. Loading a page after the PC has been turned on for a few hours can take ages as the PC just stutters and makes stupid noises. Even if you close all browsing windows at this point etc it still happens if you just try to run a game or any other app.

 

Here are some specs from System Information:

 

OS Name Microsoft Windows 7 Professional

Version 6.1.7601 Service Pack 1 Build 7601

Other OS Description Not Available

OS Manufacturer Microsoft Corporation

System Manufacturer MEDIONPC

System Model MS-7255

System Type X86-based PC

Processor Intel® Core2 CPU 4300 @ 1.80GHz, 1800 Mhz, 2 Core(s), 2 Logical Processor(s)

BIOS Version/Date Phoenix Technologies, LTD 6.00 PG, 22/06/2007

SMBIOS Version 2.4

Boot Device \Device\HarddiskVolume1

Hardware Abstraction Layer Version = "6.1.7601.17514"

Installed Physical Memory (RAM) 2.00 GB

Total Physical Memory 2.00 GB

Available Physical Memory 173 MB

Total Virtual Memory 4.00 GB

Available Virtual Memory 1.72 GB

Page File Space 2.00 GB

Page File C:\pagefile.sys

 

Using Bullguard, AdAware, SpyBot, Firefox

 

Connected to BT HomeHub with a n grade Wireless adapter, Belkin I think.

A couple of other home PCs on network, no probs there.

 

Have hoovered out box incase of heating problem, have also run safe mode scans with all virus software, defraged, deleted temp files, used some utilities I dont really understand on 'Hirens Boot CD' to do some hardware tests, no problems shown.

 

Have recently reinstalled an Operating System too - use to have XP, same problem occured then, now have 7, so possibly hardware problem instead?

 

Any advice would be great, if you need more info from me just shout.

 

Cheers

muf

[KenB]

Hi and welcome.

 

Try running Win7 upgrade advisor

http://windows.microsoft.com/upgradeadvisor

It is designed to be run on XP or Vista but may tell you if there are any driver / hardware issues as you say that you upgraded from XP to 7.

 

How much RAM do you have?

 

Try running on 1 RAM module ( swap over if the first one gives the same result ).

 

EDIT:

I see you have 2GB RAM :)

[midgetunderfire]

Hey mate,

 

Thanks for the reply. I tried the RAM swapping trick, didnt help and the Advisor said I was fine with hardware and software. Note that this problem was happening with a previous install of XP as well...

 

If any additional info is helpful, I tried installing FireFox 4, but it was hopelessly unreliable and was crashing in the more conventional sense of 'Not Responding' and freezing up rather than doing the weird stuttering thing that other browers do. Am now back to 3.6 which is a little bit better.

[KenB]

Try running a memory test from Win7

 

Click Start button, type memory, and click on Windows Memory Diagnostic

When the Windows Memory Diagnostic screen loads, click Restart now and check for problems

You computer will restart

The memory diagnostic will run and may take some time

Windows will restart and report any errors to you.

 

There is a more comprehensive test using Memtest86+

see here:

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/105647-ram-test-memtest86.html

[RandyL]

Memory would be my first guess too but this concerns me also.

the PC just stutters and makes stupid noises

As long as there is no disk in the drive bay the only things I know that can make noise are moving parts. Which means either a fan or the hard drive.

[midgetunderfire]

My fault on that above point! I was referring to the jittery audio playback from music files whilst it happens, pretty lazy of me not to clarify that, so my bad :rolleyes:

 

As for the memory test, Ill run it now and let you know. I ran some tests off a so called 'Hirens Boot CD'. Didnt understand them, but ran hardware and memory tests and all came back negative for any problems, but will do as you suggested :)

[midgetunderfire]

Windows mem test came back all happy. Bit annoying...

 

would there be a sure fire way that I could say that this was a hardware issue or a software issue? As I mentioned, it was occuring on the last OS I had installed on here, XP, which indicates it might be. Im thinking of trying out Linux in the future, and would be concerned if it was a hardware issue as it will probably affect that. Any ideas?

Cheers

muf

[RWenger]

Try reviewing this page: http://winhlp.com/node/10

 

I spent a little bit researching your problem and I think the people who have benefited from that fix have very similar problems to yours.