Hello all!
Im in need of some help with my computer. The symptoms are basically lagging when playing videos and games which occured after a start up, I then rebooted and it restarted very slowly which it does now everytime. It takes about 5 minutes for the windows logo screen to load then it lags in the welcome menu and logging in is lagging.
The games and movies never lagged before and what I did when it happened was that I changed the dvd burner sata port and replaced it with a harddrive. I only have 4 sata ports and all are occupied with harddrives so when I want to burn things or use a cd I have to switch one harddrive with the dvd player/burner. So when I changed it back and started the computer the symptoms started to show. I first thought it was malware so I posted a hjt log at another forum but after a few days of scanning we havnt found anything so I came here instead thinking it might be some other problem with software/drivers etc. Often when I play movies and it lags my cpu usage is very high and if I check in the task manager I can see there is no process there using that much.
If anyone think they can help please post a reply it will be much appreciated!
Sincerely Jacob
If this just happened, the first thing I would try is a System Restore to a date before it started occurring.
Also, instead of swapping the SATA cable between a hard drive and your optical drive, why not get a USB connected external enclosure and move one of the hard drives there?
For now, if System Restore doesn't help, connect the optical drive up again, see how it runs. This is strictly for diagnostic purposes. If it runs better then we need to figure out why swapping in the SATA drive causes the problem.
Hello Ztruker thanks alot for your reply sorry that my response is so late! I tried to change back to my optical drive and its the same symptoms… I have a system restore point but what exactly does that do? I've never done that before and I just would like to know what it will change before doing it
At second look I noticed that I dont have a system restore point dated before my computer started to show symptoms but it is activated I cant seem to go back in time more than this month I guess cause there are no system restore points then.
Give Process Explorer a try, see if it gives any more information about what is causing the lag.
Start Process Explorer (no install needed) then minimize it to the System Tray. Run your game and when it starts lagging, open PE and see what it shows you.
Hello Ztruker I tried that and it shows the following:
Interrupts: Hardware interrupts goes up and down to 50% and everytime it lags its at 50% so its definately what causes the problem!
Another symptom Ive noticed is that when I try to transfer a file from my system drive C: to another harddrive it takes about 10-20 times more time then if I transfer something from for example harddrive e to f.
Thanks for your tips so far do you what I should do from here?
How much free space do you have on your boot ( C: ) drive? Have you ever cleaned up temporary files and temporary internet files?
Download, install and run CCleaner Slim. It will cleanup all the temporary files on your system. These are files that are not needed for anything, just left behind from other activity. One of the biggest is using Internet Explorer as it can accumulate Gigabytes of TIF (Temporary Internet Files) over time.
It's also possible your hard drive is failing. Download the drive manufacturers utility program from their web site. It will be a .iso file which you use to create a bootable CD from. Then you boot the CD and run the short and if no problems found, the long test.
Note: You don't burn the .iso file to CD, you use it as input to create the bootable CD. I don't know what CD burner software you have but free ImgBurn does a good job with .iso files. If you decide to use it, burn at 4X speed.
One last suggestion.
Please Run the PCPitstop Full Tests, here: PCPitstop Full Tests
You must use Internet Explorer as it needs to install an ActiveX program.
Note: Vista users with UAC must first Right-click IE - Select "Run as Administrator"
If you haven't already registered, Click - Sign up now! (left hand column in User Login)
Register and create a password Accept the ActiveX component to allow your machine to run the Full Tests
Registering and accepting the ActiveX are both SAFE and FREE.
The Full Tests take less than 5 minutes for most machines.
Once you have your Results, please post the URL (the http:// stuff) back here into this thread for review.
Note: Vista users, please close your instance of IE "Running as Administrator" after you are finished reviewing your Results.
Caution: During the testing of Video Adapter, a variety of patterns, shapes, colors and text are “flashed” onto the users monitor screen. In the many thousands of daily uses of the PCPitstop Full Tests over several years, two individuals who suffer epilepsy experienced discomfort and temporary dizziness when viewing the flashing patterns.
If you know that you are susceptible to photo driven seizure, please look away from your screen during the Video Adapter testing sequence.
Note: The PCPitstop Full Tests Results is a free service, but is supported by various paid product advertisements for utilities that "could" remedy the OP's problem.
Since this site is a "free-help" forum, we do not recommend or endorse purchase of automated utilities, and will assist you in manually correcting any problems and settings necessary to optimize your machine's performance. Ask your questions here. We'll help you walk through any necessary steps.
Hello Ztruker I have 26,1gb free of 127gb on harddrive c: I clean my temp files from time to time but I checked the CCleaner Slim program and it only found 200mb so I didnt use it.
I have Western Digital harddrives and I tried their Data Lifeguard Diagnostic for Windows tool in windows before and quick scan didnt show any faults or errors… now I tried your way and downloaded the bootable iso file and burned it in imgburn when I tried it I get an error message that says:
Unable to locate the License Agreement file, DLGLICE.TXT!!!
Please make sure that the License Agreement file is located in the same path as DLGDIAG.EXE…
I also tried PCPitstop Full Tests and here is the link:
I don't see anything there that will make any real difference, though reducing the size fo System Restore area will give you more free space on C: and F:, which may help a little.
Defragging may help a little, won't hurt.
The other stuff I'd say ignore.
You do have a lot of software installed though, including uTorrent which, if it's active, can suck up both CPU and Network resources as well as provide a very nice path for malware infection.
Do you actually play all the games you currently have installed? If not, I'd suggest uninstalling the ones you don't, see what that does for you. Then you can try using msconfig to turn off start and service items to see if that has any impact on your problem.
Use msconfig to determine what is causing the problem.
Click on Start then Run, type msconfig and press Enter.
Click on the Startup tab, record what is currently starting then click the Disable All button.
Reboot and see if it runs normal.
If yes then use msconfig to enable several items at a time till you find the culprit.
If no, start msconfig and click on the Services tab.
Check the Hide All Microsoft Services box, record what is currently starting then click the Disable All button.
Again, do a regular boot, see if it runs normal.
If yes then use msconfig to enable services till you find the culprit.
Once you've found the culprit, uninstall it or find out how to eliminate it from your system.
Simply disabling it in msconfig is a temporary fix at best.
Enable everything else you disabled.
One last thought. Try a System Restore to before the problem started happening.
Hello Ztruker I tried the extended scan in Data Lifeguard Diagnostic for Windows but after 5 hours it still says it takes 78 hours estimated to finish so thats not something I can spare right now and I tried to defrag to after 8 hours its only on 15% but atleast I can pause it… it seems like everything I do that affects harddrive C: takes alot more time, cant it be something simple like the drivers are interfering with each other or something? Will try the msconfig thing asap!
If your HD is IDE ATA, it's performance should be at least 25 MB/s
If your HD is IDE SATA, its performance should be upwards from 35-65 MB/s or more
Therefore your HD is read/write accessing at a factor of x10 less than expected.
_____________________
Check in your Device Manager to assure that the Primary IDE Channel is set to "DMA if available" should be something like Ultra DMA 5
If it is set to "PIO" then the HD has experienced a fault. It "might" be repaired by again setting the option to "DMA if available"
But if that setting doesn't hold, then either the IDE Controller Driver is corrupt, or the HD is dying.
More….
Notice that your F:\ and I:\ Hard Drives (which are empty or nearly empty) are functioning at 65 MB/s and 50 MB/s respectively.
Your C:\ which reports just over 130 GB capactity, has only 20% FREE Space
Your G:\ has only 11% FREE Space
I'm only guessing, but my guess is that you have a ton of Gaming programs installed on C:\
Such programs have very large files.
It is unlikely that "any" Defrag utility will be able to Defrag C:\ until you unload it quite a bit.
C:\ should "ideally" be reserved for Windows Operating System and AntiVirus/AntiMalware - ONLY!
Application and Gaming Programs should "ideally" be installed upon other logical Drives.
Keep in mind that the reason to reserve up to 50% of C:\ as FREE Space is so that when you have loaded an application or gaming program, there is plenty of space to lay out the application during use.
Move some of that stuff off your C:\ and I'll bet your performance with improve.
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