System erracticly pauses

[pxleyes]

I have a weird problem going on with my system that I think
has nothing to do with 3rd person software. Ocassionly,
when minimizing or performing various actions, the system
will start to pause. It wont just pause until the action
finishes, no, the pointer will pause at a periodic rate of
about every 1-1.5 seconds. It pauses for what I amount to
about a nano-second, or one frame per second. That kind of
pause. It even pauses the audio/video of various media
files when I try to run those too. It is not limited to any
or one type of program, and even happens on the desktop. I
even tried to restore the system to nearly a month ago and
that did nothing to help. I am at a loss of the reason, and
at this rate, I am going to reformat in about 2 weeks. Any
help to avoid that kind of ordeal would be great.

 

[Malke]

I have a weird problem going on with my system that I think
has nothing to do with 3rd person software. Ocassionly,
when minimizing or performing various actions, the system
will start to pause. It wont just pause until the action
finishes, no, the pointer will pause at a periodic rate of
about every 1-1.5 seconds. It pauses for what I amount to
about a nano-second, or one frame per second. That kind of
pause. It even pauses the audio/video of various media
files when I try to run those too. It is not limited to any
or one type of program, and even happens on the desktop. I
even tried to restore the system to nearly a month ago and
that did nothing to help. I am at a loss of the reason, and
at this rate, I am going to reformat in about 2 weeks. Any
help to avoid that kind of ordeal would be great.

Reformatting should not be done as a troubleshooting tool. You haven't
given us enough information about your system to get a good answer, but
I'd look in two areas:

For the software troubleshooting, do the normal Windows steps:

1) Scan with a current (post-2002 version using updated definitions)
antivirus; and 2) remove spyware with Spybot Search & Destroy from
www.security.kolla.de and Ad-aware from www.lavasoftusa.com. Be sure to
update these programs before running them. It is best to run antivirus
and spyware removal tools in Safe Mode.

Once you know your computer is virus and spyware-free, if you are still
having problems, I'd look to the hardware. Do you have enough RAM in
your machine? Is your processor powerful enough to handle what you are
doing? If you need more help after doing the troubleshooting, then
repost and include your computer specs, as well as what you've already
done and the results.

Malke

 

[Vagabond Software]

What kind of keyboard do you have? Have you installed any Intellisense
drivers that may have come with a Natural Internet or Multimedia keyboard?

Are you a Pinball player? Seriously, the little Pinball game that comes
with Windows XP is a great tool for troubleshooting this sort of problem.

Take 30 or 60 seconds to play a game of Pinball. Pressing the spacebar
should draw the ball-launcher back in a visually smooth and natural motion.
The ball motion should be visually smooth and natural. The flipper action
should be responsive as soon as the 'Z' and '?' keys are pressed, without
any delay.

If Pinball seems a little tough to play because the flippers don't always
react immediately to your keypress and the ball tends to 'jump' and 'warp'
around, you may have some kind of macro, hotkey, or other keyboard related
applet constantly polling your keyboard interface.

I hope this helps at least eliminate one possible problem.

- carl

 

[Guest]

Sorry for not giving enough info.

Its an Inspiron 8500.
2.5 Ghz Pentium 4-M
512 RAM
60GB Harddrive
64 MB Geforce4 GO 4200
Windows XP Pro

I hope tat is a help. Yes, my computer is virus and spyware
clean. I even ran a registry cleaner to see if that would
help. I did install intellimouse 5.0 because I have an
intellimouse optical, BUT even when I uninstalled the
sofware, the driver is still reading as the 5.0 driver. I
dont know if that would have anything to do with it. My
system is up to date with all the BIOS and driver updates
for my everything from my graphics card to my touchpad.

 

[Vagabond Software]

I don't think Intellimouse would cause the problem. I was looking
specifically for a keyboard related driver, which most certainly could
create the problem you are having.

Let's look at the next thing that could be causing the problem... you
touchpad. Do you use it? If not, let's try disabling it and seeing if the
problem goes away. We don't need to uninstall the driver, just disable the
touchpad.

- carl

 

[Guest]

Tried it. There is no driver for my keyboard by the way.
Its just a generic MS one. I swear it has to be something
other than the mouse itself. Its not jsut hte mouse
pausing, but the whole system. For instance, when I run a
media player file, for the first few minutes the same thing
will occur with the video/audio. It seems to be related to
something like the RAM or processor.

 

[Malke]

Tried it. There is no driver for my keyboard by the way.
Its just a generic MS one. I swear it has to be something
other than the mouse itself. Its not jsut hte mouse
pausing, but the whole system. For instance, when I run a
media player file, for the first few minutes the same thing
will occur with the video/audio. It seems to be related to
something like the RAM or processor.

Thanks for adding the good details. OK, what about extra programs and/or
processes running in the background? You certainly sound
knowledgeable, so you've probably already looked into that, but I
needed to mention it. Another possibility might be that the computer is
overheating and it is a hardware rather than a software issue. Post
back if you need help t-shooting hardware.

Good luck,

Malke

 

[Guest]

I would like to know about some hardware t-shooting, but I
ran Dell's overly extensive diagnostic which covers
hardware and it didn't find anything to be alarming. It
could be overheating, you are right, but I cant tell
really. It has been just as hot from day 1 and this hasn't
happened. I really think it is some underlying issue that
would take going through basically every folder and every
file to find. I was planning on reformatting anyways to
create a few partitions and such for better management, so
I think I might just have to wait 2 weeks for that. I dont
know what other solution could be available except for Dell
replacing the mobo, processor, and RAM (which would never
happen).

 

[Malke]

I would like to know about some hardware t-shooting, but I
ran Dell's overly extensive diagnostic which covers
hardware and it didn't find anything to be alarming. It
could be overheating, you are right, but I cant tell
really. It has been just as hot from day 1 and this hasn't
happened. I really think it is some underlying issue that
would take going through basically every folder and every
file to find. I was planning on reformatting anyways to
create a few partitions and such for better management, so
I think I might just have to wait 2 weeks for that. I dont
know what other solution could be available except for Dell
replacing the mobo, processor, and RAM (which would never
happen).

OK, here are my "stock" generic hardware t-shooting steps:

1) open the computer and run it open, cleaning out all dust bunnies and
observing all fans (overheating will cause system freezing); 2) test
the RAM - I like Memtest86 from www.memtest86.com - let the test run
for an extended (like overnight) period of time - unless errors are
seen immediately; 3) test the hard drive with a diagnostic utility from
the mftr.; 4) the power supply may be going bad or be inadequate for
the devices you have in the system; 5) test the motherboard with
something like TuffTest from www.tufftest.com. Testing hardware
failures often involves swapping out suspected parts with known-good
parts.

Is this a fairly recent Dell desktop? Someone mentioned "laptop" in
another part of this thread, but I couldn't find a mention of that in
your postings (or perhaps I missed it, so please refresh my memory).
I've used Dell diagnostics (the 5 or 6 floppy set downloaded from their
site) and had them come back fine on a machine with bad RAM. So I'm not
excited about results from their tests and Memtest86 is much better for
the RAM. If you have a desktop, look on the back and there are some
little lights marked "A, B, C, D". They should all be green. If your
machine is under warranty, Dell absolutely will replace everything if
bad. I've had several clients where this was the case just in the last
few weeks. However, usually failure of that magnitude was shown with
plenty of BSOD's and some extremely serious error messages. This
doesn't sound the case for you.

Another thing you might try is keeping Task Manager open and watch what
happens when you get the pause. Post back if you think I can help you
further. Sorry I didn't have the definitive answer for you. BTW, with
XP a full format/clean install is rarely anything you want to use as a
troubleshooting tool. In any case, you definitely want to establish
that your hardware is good before you bother blowing everything away
because of course if the hardware is bad, no amount of software
fiddling will be useful.

Good luck,

Malke