System lags for no reason?

[Guest]

Every once in a while, my system will go into a sudden lag; my cursor
movement is choppy, music playback is choppy, and the whole system just seems
to hiccup as it works. Everything moves slow and "unsmooth" as if I'm running
a large program or opening a large file, but I'm not. This happens suddenly,
as I'm doing normal things such as surfing the web or opening programs. I
haven't found a way to stop the lag unless I restart the PC. Any ideas on why
this happens and how I can fix it?

 

[JS]

You need to find the specific process or application that's taking all
the CPU resources and slowing down your PC.

To do this try Process Explorer:
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/sysinternals/SystemInformation/ProcessExplorer.mspx

Once you have Process Explorer installed and running:
In the taskbar select View and check 'Show Process Tree' and 'Show Lower
Pane' options.
(This will provide the detailed info you need)
Next click on the CPU column to sort processes by %CPU usage.
When the slowdown occurs, click on the process that's using most or all the
CPU %,
once it's highlighted, right click and from the options listed select:
Search Online
This should display what out there on the web about the process that slowing
down your PC.

Note: some entries like Explorer and svchost may need to be expanded to show
the detail,
(sub processes), in this case click on the + located to the left on the
entry.

Still another tool is What's Running
http://www.whatsrunning.net/whatsrunning/main.aspx

JS

 

[Patrick Keenan]

Every once in a while, my system will go into a sudden lag; my cursor
movement is choppy, music playback is choppy, and the whole system just
seems
to hiccup as it works. Everything moves slow and "unsmooth" as if I'm
running
a large program or opening a large file, but I'm not. This happens
suddenly,
as I'm doing normal things such as surfing the web or opening programs. I
haven't found a way to stop the lag unless I restart the PC. Any ideas on
why
this happens and how I can fix it?

There's always a reason for this; you just don't know what it is yet,
probably because it isn't visible to you - a service or application with no
visible window.

As mentioned, get Process Explorer and familiarize yourself with what is
running and what suddenly grabs CPU cycles when the system slows. Be sure
to expand the tree far enough to see what's underneath the System entry.

HTH
-pk