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Weird computer issue
Raiden333
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
Ok, I've dealt with it for awhile, but this is starting to drive me crazy. I have a relatively decent system, 2.4 GHz quad core processor, 3 GB of Ram. Running Vista 32 bit.
I'd say about once every 5 minutes when it's at its best, and every 30 seconds when it's at its worst, no matter what I'm doing, everything will just freeze for 1-5 seconds. The mouse won't move, and all motion on the monitor and sound stops. If I move the cursor or type while the freeze is occurring, as soon as the freeze is over the cursor moves to where it should have been moved to, and all the text I typed pops up. If I'm watching a video, it usually doesn't skip any time, just continues where it froze. I don't get this luxury in online games, though, making them rather difficult to play on my PC. Whenever I try to play TF2, probably 90% of my deaths take place during these short freezes.
I can't figure out what's causing this. I check the system process manager and it says I have free memory and processor affinity. This has been going on as long as I can remember, and I'm sick of dealing with it.
I'd say about once every 5 minutes when it's at its best, and every 30 seconds when it's at its worst, no matter what I'm doing, everything will just freeze for 1-5 seconds. The mouse won't move, and all motion on the monitor and sound stops. If I move the cursor or type while the freeze is occurring, as soon as the freeze is over the cursor moves to where it should have been moved to, and all the text I typed pops up. If I'm watching a video, it usually doesn't skip any time, just continues where it froze. I don't get this luxury in online games, though, making them rather difficult to play on my PC. Whenever I try to play TF2, probably 90% of my deaths take place during these short freezes.
I can't figure out what's causing this. I check the system process manager and it says I have free memory and processor affinity. This has been going on as long as I can remember, and I'm sick of dealing with it.
There was a steam sig here. It's gone now.
Raiden333 on
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What you might try is downloading Process Monitor. Start it up, open up your system clock so you can see the time in seconds, and then wait for a hang. Then when it hangs, check the log for things like, failed file/registry accesses, memory usage, process starts, things like that at the time of the hang. Mark Russonovich's blog has some posts and videos in which he goes into more detail about using ProcMon to analyze hangs.
If you figure out what's doing it using that tool, you can send him your log dumps and some screenshots of it with the description of how you did it, and he might use your case an example in his blog or a seminar.
I might have to try the things you recommended to the OP too
I would agree that process monitor would be a good tool to check out at this point. Find out what process is causing the spike and see if its accessing a particular piece of hardware that may be choking the system.
What you've described sounds kind of like a HDD with bad sectors.
also: excellent excuse :P
I also agree with Tofystedeth and suggest Process Monitor. It's a beefed up Task Manager and should be able to tell you what the problem is, if it's a software issue.
"Read twice, post once. It's almost like 'measure twice, cut once' only with reading." - MetaverseNomad
+1
Just about every computer harddrive problem I've every had has come down to my PSU. When I was younger I would always look for something more complex,
- my HDD is dying
- my video card is flacking out
- etc.
But once I replace the PSU it all goes back to normal.
So I suggest
1. Run a bunch of RAM tests.
2. Buy / Borrow a PSU put it in check it out.
Though generally, RAM problems tend to present themselves with weirder problems than just occasional hangs.