Windows (XP AND Vista!) periodically slows down and hogs system resources

G

Geater

New Member
I've been having the problem recently where Windows XP will be running fine for five minutes or so, then for a small duration (around 20 seconds) it will grind to almost a halt (mostly noticeable in games or videos, where the frame rate drops to only about 3fps).

When running XP I thought that the problem may be due to a background process, but I recently got Vista and it's doing exactly the same thing!

Using the resource monitor, I see that the task audiodg.exe is jumping up in CPU usage during these slowdowns. It seems like having the soundcard set to 2 speakers rather than 5.1 makes the slowdowns less frequent and shorter in duration.

Here's the spec:

AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+ Dual Core (2ghz)
1GB RAM
nVidia Geforce 7600GT (512MB)
Realtek HD Audio (Integrated sound card)
Only other peripherals are 1x120GB and 2x40GB hard drives, and a wirleless PCI network card (Buffalo).

Please, does anybody know what's causing this? It's making the computer almost unusable.
 
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You mentioned that in games or videos it's really noticeable.. The problem is that you got Vista which is a memory hog by itself, the best thing is to have 2gb just to run vista, 4gb+ to run games and videos in good quality..

In XP, 1gb is pretty good for Windows and a decent game, but depends on the game you're using..

For background processes, I personally never installed audio software for my speakers, so I save a ton of memory.. You may want to un-install the audio software audiodg.exe and look for other memory hogs in the background to see what you can disable to gain more memory..
 
I did think that memory might be the issue, but the resoure monitor never goes above around 60% memory usage. Also, this wouldn't explain why I was getting the same problem, with the same spec machine, in Windows XP.

Also, it's every game - from "The Simpons - Hit & Run" to "Half Life 2", which of course vary in the amount of memory that they use. I think there's darker powers at work here somewhere...

UPDATE: I just completely disabled the sound card, and the problem still occurs - although seemingly less frequently. This time it appears to be due to the explorer.exe process, I think.
 
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explorer.exe has to run, since it's a windows process.. It shouldn't take more than 12,864k or so when you look it up... How much is yours taking?

With my browser I have a total of 18 processes running.. How many do you have?

Here's a screen shot of my task window.. If you have something else running (minus iexplorer.exe) or whatever browser you're using post it here and we can go from there...

tasksrv6.png
 
Okay, here's a screenshot of the task manager during one of the slowdowns:

tasksei8.jpg


And here's a screenshot AFTER I KILL AUDIODG.EXE - it's still slowing down (and this is during a slowdown), and nothing else seems to change!

tasks2ba2.jpg


It's not the specific game that was running (The Simpsons: Hit & Run), it also happens in Half Life 2: Episode One.
 
Well one stand out problem, is that you have 42 processes running after killing the audio exe... Try closing these tasks and then re-post your new taskmanager screen shot....
1. msnmsgr.exe
2. dwm.exe
3. SearchIndexer.exe
4. sidebar.exe
5. MSASCui.exe
6. WLLoginProxy.exe
After the above are closed, please take a new screen shot of the task manager and we'll work from there to see what unnecessary tasks are open that we can close to help you get back most of your memory..
 
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42 Processes on Windows Vista is perfectly normal.... Run a hijack this, and post the results into here. On this vista PC I have 51 Processes running.
 
yeah but msn messenger and the useless indexing service greatly reduces performance on Vista and XP.... Not to mention when he shows the other processes, I'm sure there are alot of junk processes that can be reduced to free-up memory/resources.. :)
 
I installed Vista on Saturday, so it's a pretty fresh install - and all I've installed is Live Messenger and a couple of games... I had exactly the same problem in XP before installing Vista, and it wasn't an upgrade so it's not like the same startup processes are registered or anything.

Could flakey memory be the issue? I've got a single 1GB DDR module, and it was an "extra value" one...
 
jbrdbr111x said:
yeah but msn messenger and the useless indexing service greatly reduces performance on Vista and XP.... Not to mention when he shows the other processes, I'm sure there are alot of junk processes that can be reduced to free-up memory/resources.. :)
Click to expand...


MSN can be closed off, but the indexing services is a part of Vista which in the long rung, speeds it up, and doesn't slow it down. The problem probably is your RAM, 2GB is really the minimum for Vista to run smoothly.
 
Well, I got it down to about 25 processes but the same thing still happens. It's worse in more modern games than older ones, so I'm hoping the extra memory I've ordered will do the trick.

However, saying that "Vista needs a lot of RAM" isn't actually that helpful, as I mentioned before the self-same problem was happening in XP prior to me formatting my drive and doing a completely new install.
 
The initial post about 3fps sounds like either a hard drive struggling, or video card either going bad, or not the correct, most up to date driver...

Can you watch YouTube videos? What exactly slows you down (Ie, type of game, website, etc)...
 
jbrdbr111x said:
The initial post about 3fps sounds like either a hard drive struggling, or video card either going bad, or not the correct, most up to date driver...

Can you watch YouTube videos? What exactly slows you down (Ie, type of game, website, etc)...
Click to expand...

Yeah, I agree it sounds exactly like the hard drive thrashing or something, but there's absolutely no activity. The video card is a month old, and with the latest Vista drivers installed.

I can watch YouTube videos, and play games, absolutely fine for periods (random ones, at that) - e.g. HL2: Lost Coast runs at 64fps. But then, completely randomly, one of these slowdowns will start and last 10-20 seconds, before suddenly going back to normal.

As mentioned, audiodg.exe does seem to go up to 10-20% processor activity during these slowdowns, but:

1) Windows XP doesn't have this process, yet exhibited the same problems.
2) If I kill the process, explorer.exe "takes over" as the program sapping the CPU.

It's really odd!
 
The Solution!

Well, it turns out that the graphics card was overheating - probably because I didn't leave enough space between its fan and the next card.

Training a desktop fan on it has done the trick, performance increases and the slowdowns are no more! Amazing...
 
Geater said:
I'm been having the problem recently where Windows XP will be running fine for five minutes or so, then for a small duration (around 20 seconds) it will grind to almost a halt (mostly noticeable in games or videos, where the frame rate drops to only about 3fps).

When running XP I thought that the problem may be due to a background process, but I recently got Vista and it's doing exactly the same thing!

Using the resource monitor, I see that the task audiodg.exe is jumping up in CPU usage during these slowdowns. It seems like having the soundcard set to 2 speakers rather than 5.1 makes the slowdowns less frequent and shorter in duration.

Here's the spec:

AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+ Dual Core (2ghz)
1GB RAM
nVidia Geforce 7600GT (512MB)
Realtek HD Audio (Integrated sound card)
Only other peripherals are 1x120GB and 2x40GB hard drives, and a wirleless PCI network card (Buffalo).

Please, does anybody know what's causing this? It's making the computer almost unusable.
Click to expand...

vista use a lot of memeory, so you will need at least 2gb of memory
 
jbrdbr111x said:
Glad you got it taken care of... Look on the bright side as well, you now have more memory as well!:)
Click to expand...

Hah hah - yeah, you're right!

Of course, this is now an issue rather than a problem... I've given the card as much space as I can, but it still overheats without having the desk fan blowing on it! I'd imagine you can buy a better fan for the video card, but I'd rather not do that... Would getting better case fans, even though they're not actually that close to the card, do anything?
 
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