Strange Slowdown games/ movies.

Corpekata

So, having some strange issues with my computer. First off, I live in AZ, so yes, I assumed this was just an overheat issues. Cleaned my system out. Didn't make a difference. Anyways, the problem:

When watching video files, the display will suddenly slow down to a crawl. Sound drops or distorts, and the video runs at probably sub 10 FPS. Hitting a key on my keyboard seems to wake it back up and it resumes normally.

Games, if I'm playing KBAM, work fine. If I'm playing with say, a 360 controller, it'll slowdown like the videos, though it happens more often.

It seems like the system is deciding to slow/throttle down when it's not in use or something, and the only way it can tell is if the keyboard is in recent use. I looked through power settings and there's nothing that stands out as to why this is happening. Google fu is not helping me much either.

So, any ideas? Getting frustrating. I thought maybe it was because I have my controller's USB dongle plugged in all the time and it might be overheating something, but it happens in videos when I don't have it plugged in anyway.

Bendery It Like Beckham

Post your specs

SmokeStacks

It really sounds like you've got some sort of background process that is kicking in while your system is not "in use", and it's really terrible at determining what constitutes an in use state.

Are you running any antivirus programs/distributed computing programs or anything else in the background? Do you hear your hard drive making noise when it happens?

Maybe you picked up some malware and are now part of some Russian bitcoin mining botnet.

In the meantime, there is a temporary solution:

Corpekata

Funny you should mention that. I picked up a program called Autokey presser. And...it works. I have it set up to hit the numlock key every 2 minutes since I don't really use the number pad often and no games use that for an input. Games and videos are now fine as long as the program is running. I've tried shutting down as much processes as I can safely do using automatic things like SmartClose and it didn't seem to make a difference. Have scanned for viruses/ malware multiple times, no traces. Only constant protection I really bother with is Security Essentials and I'll load up other programs when I'm actively scanning. I do have things running in the background but they are things like Steam, Chrome, or things related to my hardware that I've tried disabling at one time or another with no effect.

Bendery It Like Beckham

automatic windows updates can be buggy sometimes, had the problem on an older computer.