Computer sputtering.... help? :(

S

Serp

New Member
My computer used to every 60 seconds just sputter, slowing video and garbling sound to a sputter.

It stopped for about a month, and now it's doing it again, I haven't installed or changed anything, soft or hardware.

I'm looking at my Performance tab and I have a quad core, every 60 seconds all 4 cores just JUMP all the way to peak for no reason. I have nothing running except VLC media player listening to music so I know when it does it. But it skips without VLC on, such as if I'm playing a video game or watching a video on youtube.

I've scanned for Virus' and cleaned my registry, but it doesn't help.

Sometimes it's just the 4th core that jumps.

I know my computer isn't overheating because I'll leave it off for 14 hours, then turn it on and it sputters right away. It's just so annoying and there's no reason for it.

Umm... I have
Vista 32bit
ASUS m3a32 wifi/deluxe motherboard
velociraptor 150GB hard drive
Radeon 3870 X2 (crossfired) (Sputters crossfired or not)
 
You're running outta gas :P

Nah, first thing, I'd go to the processes tab and look at what's eating up the processor.
 
Are you looking in the task manager or the Reliability and Performance monitor now seen in Vista? In the TM just opening it up will see the initial skyrocket jump on the monitor there. That's normal. When you click a browser or open up anything else there's an initial spike to the top and then settles down as a steady progressive line.

During that month were none of this was seen recall what were the last few things just before that like video or sound updates? Do you have the automatic updates option enabled for Windows?

Besides a video or sound driver becoming lost or corrupted you could be still looking at a cpu or memory problem of some type if this turns out to be hardware related. Most likely it will turn out to be a video or sound driver problem since you run media regularly with or without VLC. Simply reinstalling the video or sound driver may clean this right up.

In the meantime looking at the processes using the most and even disabling a few items in the msconfig utility might help track down what is tasking the cpu there.
 
I've been thinking about downgrading to XP 64.

As far as the initial spike of opening the task manager, I let it set completely still and every 60 seconds it spikes, not touching the mouse or anything, no music open, no browsers, just normal stuff. AVG, my ATI tab, and my Mouse program.

I do have auto update, it could have been that I suppose.

I guess I'll have to try reinstalling my video drivers, or just maybe find newer ones if there are any.
 
no dont get xp64, its crap and as far as i know there aint that many apps that support it. you best bet is to format and reinstall vista like Irishlard said.
 
A clean install of Windows on a fresh primary would be a thought while first trying out any updates for video and sound may see things cleaned up for you without going that far. Again that's provided it doesn't turn out in some way to be hardware not Windows or anything installed.

FOOBAR FOR XP PRO64! could be easily said since that should be the version actually considered ME II due to the lack of just about any real 3rd party driver support. Someone did mention the use of Server 2003 drivers to get things running in that version. But?

Vista now sees a better support while it's still going to take some time before 64bit becomes actual mainstream seeing the transition over from 32bit. You are seeing 3rd party driver support at this time while somethings still lack but where are all the games, apps, open source document processors/wordsheets, etc.? The simple reality is the market is a 32bit place at present.
 
A removal and then fresh install of updates for both video and sound would be the first step to see if that will work before starting all over with a clean install of Windows in order to see if that will work. A fresh copy of Windows would be kind of the last step if needed.
 
I redid the drivers for video, still giving me lag spikes.

I don't have a copy of vista, I bought my computer pre-made.

I guess I'll have to redo my sound drivers.


Also, a while back I read about a computer program that came with certain games that was supposed to prevent pirating. I read that it can mess up systems because even after you uninstall the game the anti-piracy software stays behind and every once in a while it looks to make sure the proper disk is in your system. With the way my system lag spikes like that it seems like there's a chance it could be that, but I don't remember the name of the anti-piracy software. I know a lot of people are petitioning and boycotting it.
 
I couldn't help you on that. But giving a try for a fresh set of sound drivers might be the key for the problem. You can still look in the msconfig utilities startup and services group for anything you don't need to see auto loading along with Windows to see if that helps any. You might end disabling that too!
 
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