random system lags

Status
Not open for further replies.

xeer

Beta member
Messages
5
First off, here's my setup

Asus A8V Deluxe (Socket 939)
Amd Athlon 64 3000+ (1.8ghz)
512MB DDR-PC3200 400Mhz (1 stick, Kingston)
ATI All-in-Wonder 9800 Pro 128MB DDR (AGP 8x)
Antec 480w Power supply


Here is the problem i'm having. At completely random times, the system halts for 1 second. It then waits between 3 and 20 and halts again for 1 second. This continues for about 5 or 10 times (sometimes more). I could have practicaly no programs running (terminated all the processes) and it would still do this. There are also times where my cpu is bogged down and im inching up to a gig on my pagefile, and it wouldnt halt even the slightest.

When this halt occurs, the mouse/keyboard/video/sound stop responding. If I move the mouse during a halt and let go before the 1 second it is up, upon the next screen refresh the mouse takes the new position it would have been as if there were no halt. Though, the sound (i use winamp) continues after the halt without skipping over any of the audio. If I continue to type during this 1 second halt, when the halt is over all the keyboard input I had given during the halt get flushed out immediately after, in a big burst. My ethernet doesnt seem to have any problems during this halt, I recieve all packets just fine (as far as i know). The halting can occur as soon as windows loads, and continues even during the shutdown process (2 minutes to load XP pro, due to an excess of the halts).

I really havnt a clue as to why this is happening. The best I can guess, its my memory. All my parts are brand new. I ran XP Pro 64bit and the system didnt have these halts, but it also didnt have over half of the drivers because they were not available for the 64bit platform (which is why i switched back to XP Pro 32bit). ATI had 64bit drivers but I kept getting an error saying I wasnt logged on the admin when I was, could never get it to install.

I'm pulling my hair out, if anyone has even the slightest suggestion or comment, please.... PLEASE feel free to make it known. Thanks.
 
I am thinking it to be the graphics card, as I have had problem like this with graphics cards before. Try reinstalling newer drivers for the card.

If this doesnt work, i think it is spyware or virus's.
 
I'm 100% sure there is no spyware/virii. I have the latest Catalyst drivers, i'll try reinstalling those.

For now, im using a somewhat old Quantum Fireball 15GB. I was thinking about disabling paging and seeing if the halts would still occur. I'll try that when I get home from work, on my lunch break now. Thanks for the input.
 
whats the rpm, buffer, average seek time, etc on your hard drive.
by the sound of it, a 15 gig drive is about 4yrs old, and that is prolly whats slowing you down. especialy if your paging 1gig on that pewny thing, its probably having a heart attack.
 
At the place I work, we've had to replace 80% of the Fireball hard drives in our systems. For some reason, these drives just tend to die out after a few years. I would never recommend having one of these drives in a computer.
 
Then it looks like i'll be getting my 10,000 RPM SATA a little sooner..

Also, I just noticed, when im watching tv and there is a hang, the tv video keeps rendering like normal. not a single dropped frame. =/
 
That may be because your TV tuner isn't being affected for some reason. If this is the case, it's probably not your hard drive that's causing the problem.
 
i think its the hard drive, we had an old 20 gig quantum fireball in our old old gateway and replaced it with a WD 7200 rpm hard drive and no more halts with it, i really do think its the HD
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top Bottom