Sudden slowness on Gaming PC

[pumaking]

Alright so I noticed recently on my gaming/main PC that my computer has been lagging quite a bit. Pretty much what happens is if Im listening to music or watching a video and I open up a internet explorer/fire fox page I notice the video stuttering like crazy and when playing music it crackles like crazy until the webpage is done loading. I've ran scans everything shows 100%. No spyware, virus, etc etc.


Im starting to think hardware problems.


Any ideas? My PC has been working fine for the past year and a half, and than out of nowhere it started to do this. I noticed its been effecting my download speeds as when I restart my PC I get about 5mb download on Speedtest and than a few hours later I'd be lucky to get 1mb download.

 

[PC eye]

Same installation of Windows? Most likely! After so long your system registry gets loaded up with a long list of useless entries and your startup list grows over time.

A clean install of Windows periodically will cure most ills. Here it's likely sooner due to beta testing. After a year or more a fresh install will see a much faster running system. For a substitute a good registry cleaning, reducing startup items in the msconfig utility, and defragging the hard drive when fragmentation is apparent are the basics.

One free cleaner several are favoring is the free Eusing registry cleaner found at http://www.eusing.com/free_registry_cleaner/registry_cleaner.htm

There arre drive maintainence programs like Diskkeeper that automatically keep a drive organized as well as another freeware for seeing the drive free of useless no longer used temp folders and cleaning up the IE or FireFox history as well like CCleaner found at http://www.ccleaner.com/

The latest java runtime by SUN Microsystems as well as SP3 now available for XP with over 1,000 fixes for that version can be a help as well. http://www.java.com/en/

 

[cohen]

Do you use CCleaner???

And might be worth on posting a hijackthis log, just to make sure you have no viruses, what virus protection have you got??

If after that you are still infected, please post a Hijackthis log. To post a Hijackthis log, please do the following:
Click Here to download HJTsetup.exe


* Save HJTsetup.exe to your desktop.
* Double click on the HJTsetup.exe icon on your desktop.
* By default it will install to C:\Program Files\Hijack This.
* Continue to click Next in the setup dialogue boxes until you get to the Select Additional Tasks dialogue.
* Put a check by Create a desktop icon then click Next again.
* Continue to follow the rest of the prompts from there.
* At the final dialogue box click Finish and it will launch Hijack This.
* Click on the Do a system scan and save a log file button. It will scan and then ask you to save the log.
* Click Save to save the log file and then the log will open in notepad.
* Click on "Edit > Select All" then click on "Edit > Copy" to copy the entire contents of the log.
* Come back Paste the log in a new post, using Hijackthis in your Subject bar
* DO NOT have Hijack This fix anything yet. Most of what it finds will be harmless or even required.


We will look at your log as soon as we see it, and give you further instructions on how to fix your computer. Most of the time it will involve downloading more programs that will either give us logs to locate the malware or delete those malware.

Once you have posted a HJT Thread DO NOT make any changes to your PC unless the advisor helping you has instructed you to do so!

 

[pumaking]

The programs im using are AVG Pro 8.0.138, Spybot Search and Destroy, Spyware Blaster. I recently defragged my hard drive using Auslogics Disk Defrag and Auslogics BoostSpeed.

My OS is Vista Business 32 Bit. It's only been on for about 7months. I dont download a lot of programs as this mainly my internet and gaming PC. A majority of my software is Half Life games, Steam, Overclocking Software, Nero, BitComet, etc etc.

Start Up isnt a problem. Its when the computer is on for a extended period of time I get these stupid burst of slowdown when I visit a website.

 

[pumaking]

Here is my hijack log.

 

[PC eye]

You could be seeing a temp problem if you haven''t been monitoring them at all. After so long things are running a little warm where you may have a need for additional cooling. I've run into that a bit on older builds where things started acting up after running for extended periods.

As for Steam games the intial loading is the one thing that will be slow if your connection is also slow or having problems. For multi player that's a must need to attend to while it's a nuisance choosing the start in offline for single player mode.

 

[G25r8cer]

Here is my hijack log.

Your hijackthis is clean

 

[PC eye]

No surprise here!

After any lengthy period of time Windows will see a bunch of clutter on both the drive and in the registry itself. Try the free tools and look over the startup group in the msconfig along with analyzing the drive(s) to see if you have any volume of fragmentation being seen.

 

[pumaking]

I think what I'll try tonite is run memtest86 for the night see if the ram might be causing some issues.


Do you guys want me to take a pic of when the cpu usage skyrockets? I can also take a video of when it happens.

 

[pumaking]

No surprise here!

After any lengthy period of time Windows will see a bunch of clutter on both the drive and in the registry itself. Try the free tools and look over the startup group in the msconfig along with analyzing the drive(s) to see if you have any volume of fragmentation being seen.

I get what your saying. The only problem I see is that I've let my computer on for weeks straight even a month straight without this ever happening. This just started like recently seems like it happened right after firefox 3 came out.

but I'll give your ideas a shot. Im sure worse case scenario I either reformat, or swap some parts.

 

[PC eye]

So you think FF3 has something to do with the online problems at least. That is a reasonable thought there. Unfortunately that's one type of drawback seen with open source developments where things don't work the same after awhile.

Here I run the build here about 16hrs. daily without hardwares coming into play. The latest release of FF can only account for some things. For general maintainence if you haven't done that lately grab a can of air cleaner and remember to wipe fan blades off when going to blow the dust out. Make sure those are running upto speed as well is another thing if you are running warm.

 

[pumaking]

Thanks PC Eye. My PC is definatly due for a cleaning. I did notice that when my slow down occurs some network processes are whats taking up my cpu's power. I'll take a pic later tonite.

 

[PC eye]

When the fans get loaded up with dust they slow down and temps otfen climb. Regular cleaning always helps.

For network processes take a look if the MS messager is is checked off. If you are using another or none at all that is one item you can disable in the msconfig to see that will help a little. The processes tab in the task manager will show the specific items there however that are grabbing resources on you.

 

[pumaking]

Well so far its been about 8 hours since I did a deep cleaning of the PC. Soo far PC EYE it looks like your idea worked. I unplugged everything vacuum, compressed air the whole thing. Took off the CPU heatsink cleaned it etc etc. After that I ran stability tests, etc etc and everything is 100%. Im trying to load the system to see if the video or sound stutters and so far rock solid. Thanks again PC Eye.


One of the ways I was able to make the system stutter was by playing music, watching a movie and doing a bandwidth test on speedtest.net . Well lets just say its as if the first day I fired up my pc. So im gonna try to maintain a bi-monthly cleaning of the PC.

 

[PC eye]

You likely saw some slow downs and fans dragging with the lack of maintainence. I have to get in there and blast a case out here due to air conditioner hastenly the dust distribution that follows forced air heat in the winter.

Talk about seeing dust form around the twin front intake fans a daily look shows the Antec 900 acts like an air purifier with all the air conditioners running! Every other day get that front grill wiped just to see the dust starting there gone.

After so long you will always start seeing dust get in around dimm slots as well as the PCI and PCI-E slots as well. The fans bog down and the board itself sees a film grow on it where temps start being noticed.

Once you get all that cleaned out the fans run better as well as faster and the overall temps drop seeing a better running system overall. Too often people put aside a few basics and you saw for yourself how that effects things.

 

[pumaking]

I think I may of celebrated too fast. I tried loading up the system again and it started stuttering again, however it didn't do it as severe just little bits.


However it only happens when I do the broadband tests, not before where just surfing the net would cause it.

 

[PC eye]

The slowdown there then seems mostly limited to online activity. How's the rest doing as far as gaming or running other programs? The maintainence you performed should have been an improvement in those areas.

I haven't gone for FF 3 quite yet while still seeing FF2 and Safari 3.1 on here. With that being recently final you may be some security feature or incompatibilty with the new version of that browser having an effect. Have you seen any problems when using IE and running the same tests?