Odd stuttering in Vista 32-bit

[Ken Adams NSA]

Hey all,

After searching the 'net for months, I have yet to come up with a solution
to my dilemma. Here's the deal. I have a Vista Ultimate 32-bit desktop,
running an Intel 3.0 GHZ CPU and 1 GB of RAM. Everytime I leave my computer
on for hours (typically overnight) it starts this odd, stuttering behavior,
where EVERYTHING stops for a split second, every second. Music, mouse, video,
EVERYTHING. The entire computer just skips. The only fix I have is turning
the power off on the back of the computer, then unplugging and replugging the
power cord in. I am positive this is not a great thing for my computer, and I
need to find a solution before any real damage is done. This only happens
after a long time, and is not after a specific time (i.e. after 3-4 hours
EVERY time). Any suggestions? I was thinking it could be the RAM, but I don't
know.

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

 

[Neus]

Yeh its not good at all to turn your computer off that way. If its
stuttering try shutting down normally and just giving it a few minutes, or if
that fails press and hold the power button until it shuts off before just
cutting the power off direct... its not good for the computer and can cause
your system to not be able to boot.

Now my question for you is do you have an antivirus program running? and if
so do you know if it is set to every day to run a scan at a certain time?
Usually these scans are set for early morning when people most likely wont be
using the computer, but it is likely that it could still be running when you
wake up and find everything jittery because the processing power is going to
the scan. So first of all check to see if an auto scan is running. Let it
finish if you can, but if you have work to do you can pause it or stop it and
let it do its thing later.

Its also possibly a memory leak or something in a program. Next time it
starts to jitter press Ctrl Alt Del and bring up the task manager, and switch
to the processes tab at the top and look at the cpu column and look for
anything taking large amounts of the cpu power (ignore system idle process,
thats the free cpu space).. by large we are talking probably at least 50% of
your processor maybe more.

 

[JW]

Your power supply is possibly overheating and having trouble putting out
constant voltages and when you shut down the computer and then turn off the
computer in the back the power supply is resetting itself so that the
problem does not occur again till it overheats again. I have had a similar
problem on occasion with my power supply not starting up properly on a boot
if I did not unplug it in the back so that it reset what ever problem caused
not to supply the correct voltages at boot time.

 

[Ken Adams NSA]

How would I check that the power supply is freaking out? Thanks for the
ideas, both of you. I will see if Norton AV is causing the problem, but
something tells me it's some sort of memory leak or RAM issue. My stuff is
fairly old, and it might be time for an upgrade. I'll check to see if there
are any memory leaks in my task manager when i get home, because I'm positive
that it will be glitching out when I check it out.

Any programs that allow me to diagnose my RAM? If it helps at all, this
problem only happens on Vista. When I downgrade it to XP, the PC runs
completely fine. Perhaps one of Vista's features is sucking up memory?

 

[JW]

Makes sense then I suggest that after an hour with the system idle or so you
use task manager to check the memory usage of all process and then check
again an hour later and see if some process has increased it memory usage
considerably.

 

[DevilsPGD]

In message <[email protected]> Ken

After searching the 'net for months, I have yet to come up with a solution
to my dilemma. Here's the deal. I have a Vista Ultimate 32-bit desktop,
running an Intel 3.0 GHZ CPU and 1 GB of RAM. Everytime I leave my computer
on for hours (typically overnight) it starts this odd, stuttering behavior,
where EVERYTHING stops for a split second, every second. Music, mouse, video,
EVERYTHING. The entire computer just skips. The only fix I have is turning
the power off on the back of the computer, then unplugging and replugging the
power cord in. I am positive this is not a great thing for my computer, and I
need to find a solution before any real damage is done. This only happens
after a long time, and is not after a specific time (i.e. after 3-4 hours
EVERY time). Any suggestions? I was thinking it could be the RAM, but I don't
know.

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Shot in the dark, but do you have any substantial USB activity
(removable drives, USB sound device, etc) when the problem occurs?

 

[Ken Adams NSA]

No, not that I know of. Most of the problem seems to come from just time
elapsing.

Do you think I should disable indexing?