2nd opinion on PC stuttering problem

[Sabre]

A strange issue hit my PC recently. Every so often ranging from once an hour to every few minutes the machine will stutter for a second, and then usually, a few seconds later, will "catch up" that lost second or 2. Having not installed anything for a week or more before it started it was suprising. Even so I uninstalled a bunch of games, cleaned and defragged my HDD, scanned for viruses and spyware, usual suspects. All green, and no change.

A friend of mine believes that it could be the fans of my machine are clogged with dust or some other similar problem causing either my CPU or GPU to overheat. My experience with overheating is crashes and degraded performance, not stuttering. Even so, it's easy to check, but since that means opening the machine I thought I would get a second (or third?) opinion on the matter before I open her up on Monday.

On a related note, if I vanish around that time you know why.

["User"]

I think I've had a similar problem in the past with the stuttering on my PC.  The problem in my case was that I needed a new power case as the fan in that kept striking the the air ventilation causing noise and my computer froze because of it on one occasion I think. I wasn't going to open up a power supply case and start fooling around with it lest I kill myself from a shock or what not so I just went out and bought another one.

[Steve]

First thing first, if you think it's an overheating or a fan issue, have you checked the temperature of said hardware?, you can always google online to see what's the min and max temperature of said parts as well as check the normal supposed speed of your fan

[Sabre]

Thought of that, but the bios one doesn't seem to report anything out of the ordenary and I don't fancy installing programs when my machine is acting up. Also, if it a GPU, will have to clean it anyway.

[Guest F0xmccl0ud]

Can you describe the stuttering in a little more detail, PC performance and hardware repairs is my specialty its my major in school and its what I work on outside of school.  :)

[DZComposer]

I'd lean more towards a software issue at first. Usually fans make a horrid, loud, grinding sound before they fail. Of course, giving it a little TLC with an air-duster never hurts.

What A/V package are you running? Notice anything else going on during this, IE CPU or disk usage spikes?

Also, rundown of what hardware in the machine and what OS you're running may help.

Also, define "stutter." I'm not exactly sure what you mean by that.

[Sabre]

Managed to get the side off today, gave it a quick clean, and left the side off for the time being until I can see what the issue is. I can't see the fan though due to the way it's possitioned. Even so, there wasn't alot of dust there.

As for stuttering. I will do 10 green bottles.

"10 green bot-t-t-t-t-tles standing on the wall. 10 green b-the wall"

It's kind of like when a game crashes, but it keeps going, then skips a bit.

Im using Vista 64 on this partition, don't usually use XP much atm.

AMD 2.6 quad core

4gb ram

Mirrored HDD

GTS 250

I'm going out today but I'll keep you posted.

EDIT: Found out that my machine has been trying (and failing) to install service pack 2. Might or might not have something to do with it. I ripped out my anti virus as well and got SP2 installed.

EDIT 2: I booted my XP partition and found no stutter. That said, the most graphicly intense game on it is Sin Episodes. However, a friend pointed out someone he knows had a similar incident to me, and firefox was the cause. Apparently, the latest version uses the GPU for web browsing, but for whatever reason was screwing up his card. Underclocking it allegedly. Seems strange, but worth looking into before I do complete re-install.

[DZComposer]

OK, so this only happens in games? Have you tried updating your video card drivers?

[Sabre]

OK, so this only happens in games? Have you tried updating your video card drivers?

Already done.

As for it just being games, no. If it is an overheating issue, then games will push the machine harder. The stuttering is noticable whatever I'm doing, but it's most noticable in games for obvious reasons.

[Guest F0xmccl0ud]

Alright, and you checked your temps in the bios? what were they at? and do you overclock?

[Guest F0xmccl0ud]

The primary reason I ask is because I have a similar build to your for a desktop, but mine is overclocked at every point possible, so I have tested the limits and experienced the symptoms/probs that can come from OCing.

GTS 450

Phenom 2.2 natural OC to 2.7 or Athlon 3.0 natural OC to 3.8 (I switch occasionally depending on what I'm currently into, example would be emulating)

6gb DDR PC2-6400

[Sabre]

I don't over clock. If it is an overheating issue, it's not happening on XP, and seems to be cooled when I manage to navigate to it, assuming that's what's happening. I'll try though.

I'm going to try cleaning my reg when I can be arsed. After that I might as well re-install vista, but I really would like to know what caused this before doing so.

[Guest F0xmccl0ud]

Well, if it runs fine in Xp and you don't think its a heat issue, then it probably is a software issue. One more question, do you use any of the EVGA software that came with the video card, or the Nvidia CUDA toolkit, just anything along those lines?

[Sabre]

I don't use it, but I have it somewhere. Why?

[Guest F0xmccl0ud]

Well I removed all those third party programs from my system and my pc performance (meaning overall quality and score in windows experience index) actually went up. Not saying that's your prob. but Its worth a shot before you format. Anyway Good luck to ya  :D

[Sabre]

Heh. By having them somewhere, I meant on a disc in the bottom of a box somewhere.

I'm starting to think reformat is a must at this point. I'm going to back up non essential files (game saves, bookmarks, sexy p0rnz, ect.) though it will be my first reformat on a machine of mine and my first duel boot reformat, so I'm worried I will cock it up somehow. Got to find that floppy with the drivers on first though. Ug.

I might install some steam games on my XP side that have cloud support.

[Guest F0xmccl0ud]

Have you done a system restore? That's something else to try too, if all else fails then Good Luck.

If I could I would help you, Its something I do on a fairly regular basis.

Just be sure you have everything you need before you format, Its not hard to forget something somewhere.

[DZComposer]

Don't format just yet.

I suspect some process is overusing the CPU. Run the task manager (ctrl + shift + esc), go to the processes tab, check "show processes by all users," and see what program tops when sorted by CPU time when this happens. Kill that process and see if that solves it. If it does, then you know the culprit and can troubleshoot that program as to why it is doing that. My guess is your A/V software.

No need to reinstall the OS if it is just a background application that needs to be reconfigured/reinstalled.

[Sabre]

Thanks for the advice everyone. I know I come across as a know it all knob in this thread, but it is what I'm trained in.

Don't format just yet.

I suspect some process is overusing the CPU. Run the task manager (ctrl + shift + esc), go to the processes tab, check "show processes by all users," and see what program tops when sorted by CPU time when this happens. Kill that process and see if that solves it. If it does, then you know the culprit and can troubleshoot that program as to why it is doing that. My guess is your A/V software.

No need to reinstall the OS if it is just a background application that needs to be reconfigured/reinstalled.

I have a video project to finish before I wipe. Was going to do it in the new year, but now I might not have to.

As you know, I had no stutter on XP. The only thing the 2 OS' have in common is Firefox and Steam. I use XP mainly for legacy games. Not being able to enjoy games properly I decided to install L4D 1 on XP. Nostalgia bite aside I got half way through a campaign, guess what. Stutter. Given that the steam forums aren't full of threads about this problem I think we can rule 2 seperate installs of corrupting the exact same way. With the side off, I ran my hand near the machine (grounded first of course) and could feel heat. A little hot but nothing to be concerned over.  Exiting the game and going to BOIS shows all tempratures to be 38-41c fairly typical PC operating temp. Unfortuantly due to the layout I can't have the machine plugged in and get a good view to see what, if anything, is going on fan wise.

In a can't see the woods for the trees moment, I decide to rule out overheating for the time being, but it's looking more and more like a case of faulty hardware, but given how varied the stutters can be I can't think of anything else other then power that could vary to that degree. A loose power cable to the fans/card could explain it, but again, there would be an error or something noticable.

TL:DR? I believe it is a hardware issue, but what exactly is unclear. I will recheck the connections, make sure everything is plugged in securly, and then I'm going to have start replacing bits. Unfortunatly it's the expecive stuff so I'm going to have to pick carefully.

[DZComposer]

You haven't eliminated software yet. 90% of PC problems are software problems.

Unless you start seeing it regularly outside L4D2, I will think what happened on your XP partition is a fluke or a bug in the game.

Did you at least look at the CPU usage when it does this (outside of a game) on your Vista side? This still sounds like a classic case of the resource hog process to me.

[Sabre]

I haven't seen anything unusual but I will check again.

EDIT: So I did as you asked, and found a SVghost spike. Doing some research into the matter, it seems as though this is not uncommon. What's strange is the problem will persist until you let the machine idle for a few minutes.

The common theory is that it is ReadyBoost and SuperFetch, services that pre-load popular programs into RAM. Not an issue as I have 4gb of the stuff and even with games rarely reach that cap, and the other uses USB stuff for tempory storage and freaks out without them. I am considering disableing them. Apparently it's not uncommon for it to try and cache games and the like that use up all the cache, and then it get's stuck in a caching loop.

On a related note, my cleaning has resulted in a much fast boot, which is nice.