Computer CPU Spikes, going from 0 to 100 and lag ensues (Could be Hardware)

[KSoD]

The SVCHosts is not the issue. I have at least 10 of them running.

Aside from that your problem is driver related. Not ALL drivers are done through Windows Update. If they were then what would be the purpose of manufacturer's having them on their website?

So basically you have told me that all you have done is updated your Video driver. You could possibly have bad sound, chipset, among so many other drivers on your system that are not automatically updated by Windows update and you wonder why there are issues? So yes it would happen with EVERY game cause it is due to it being a CORE issue. Also if you would check around you would see that ATI drivers are shotty at best. Some people have reverted back to drivers for Vista over the ones they are are Win7 ready due to all of the issues they have had with them.

So i still dont suspect any hardware problems. I suspect driver problems cause you havent done a single thing to try and resolve any issues. Relying on Windows Update is the first mistake. That updates Windows not every driver for every device.

 

[VistaGamer]

Okay, I'll get to that. But is there really no narrowing down? it makes no sense because it was working fine for at least a month after I had first installed Win7. If it was a problem that was from all the hardware and software that wasn't up to date with drivers it would have happened way before then.

Is there a tool, next to going into device manager (unreliable), that can help install drivers? What else doesn't make sense is that when I was using Vista and XP for 3-4 years earlier I only ever updated my Video Drivers and it was fine. I thought it would have been safe to assume that VIdeo Drivers came first since most my problems stemmed from that.

 

[Shylock]

well it could be a lot of things, imo. in relation to your HD specifically, idle processes like to expand your swap space periodically and that can cause a uptick in resource usage for a few ticks for instance. you can eliminate that itself I suppose by going into your virtual memory and setting it to a set value. personally for better performance, I always have mine on a separate partition, if not striped and on a faster area of my HD, but you can at least see if thats part of the problem, but just setting it to a specific size, ie exactly twice your memory, or 1.5X.
It probably isnt that though honestly, but it's worth a try.
it can also be a AV program.
What I'd suggest doing, is what I often suggest...get a live pocket OS like SLAX (From SLAX.org) boot up your system and see if its doing the same thing. if it isn't then you know obviously it isn;t a hardware specific thing, which it likely is not. once you know it's OS specific, which frankly 99% of stuff like this is, you can get to eliminating the factors, one by one. eventually you'll narrow it down, it just takes work.
Also, I might suggest optimizing your services, and starting with a clean install with a dual boot with a old install that has the problem. <shrug> good luck.
btw, I once ran a system stuttering periodically problem down to a keyboard jack problem where it was grounding out against the case. stuff happens.
btw, I'm with mac on guessing its your drivers probably. but probably doesnt mean definitely, so good luck.