Vista Stuttering

[afreet]

Hi everyone, over the last two days my computer has developed a major stuttering problem. It's most obvious when I'm playing music (in iTunes, though it happens in Winamp as well, so it's not cause by iTunes) since there is a literal audio stuttering, but even if I'm just moving my mouse around on the screen the stutters can be seen when the pointer stops momentarily and then catches up. This happens in all programs (even as I'm writing this). I don't really know what's happening during the stutter, but I have noticed that in the Disk graph of the resource monitor there is always a spike in the blue line (highest active time percentage) at the exact time of the stutter. If blue line was already high there might not be any additional spike, leading me to assume that the computer isn't having problems because of the spike, but rather that the spike is associated with it somehow, but then again I don't know which is why I'm asking here :)

I should say that I had a problem similar to this in the past and it was suggested that it was being caused by the computer overheating, which turned out to be exactly the problem. I ran speedfan, saw that it was hot, then realized that there was an insane amount of dust covering the insides and when I blew it away everything worked fine again. Now I make sure to keep the insides less dusty, and speedfan is reporting everything is OK.

I'm running vista 64-bit, and everything's been working fine for several months now. I didn't make any significant changes in the past two days (any changes at all that I can think of, other than updating firefox and iTunes), and have tried closing all applications and most of the other random programs running in the background, which I try to keep to a minimum anyway. Nevertheless, I rarely go more than 5 minutes without a series of stutters, and often don't make it more than 20 seconds. Does anyone know what's happening, or if there is some way to identify the actual process causing the spike? I don't know what all information I need to provide, so please let me know!

-Max

[Dance.]

What are your computer specs?

[afreet]

I'm using Windows Vista Ultimate, 64-bit, Service Pack 1. Core 2 Duo E6600 (2.4GHz), 4 GB RAM, MSI P6N SLI Platinum motherboard. NVIDIA GeForce 8600 GT, some Western Digital HD (the newest part in there, but it's been going fine for >6 months). What else do you want?

[Eric Veteran]

Have you tried running the computer for a while with Task Manager open? If you leave it on the Processes page you can sort it by CPU usage when the stuttering starts and see if something is using up all the CPU time.

Also, try checking the Performance and Reliability Monitor to see if it's reporting anything wrong. (I just use the Start search to run it.)

[afreet]

I'm not sure exactly what to look for in the Performance and Reliability Monitor. Nothing recent is popping up in the reliability section, and the performance section just looks like a weaker version of the resource monitor :) I did try ordering by CPU usage, but there doesn't appear to be any CPU hit during the stutters, only a disk spike. Since I can only sort the disk section by bytes/min I can't get enough precision to see what's actually happening. Sometimes it seems like random log files top the list (at the moment it's "C:\$LogFile (NTFS Volume Log)" and "C:\$Mft (NTFS Master File Table)", but other times it's just the pagefile.

[Eric Veteran]

Hmm. Maybe your pagefile got corrupted somehow? You should be able to delete "pagefile.sys" on your system drive from safe mode. If that doesn't work you can go to the System control panel, then click Advanced System Settings>Advanced tab, go to "Change..." under "Virtual memory" and set it to "No paging file". Then reboot, go back to that panel and reset it to "System managed size".

[afreet]

I tried running with no pagefile at all (which incidentally made my system seem really responsive!) but still had the same issue. It isn't happening quite as frequently, but I'm not sure if that's because I've hit a lull, or if it really is happening less frequently. "C:\$LogFile (NTFS Volume Log)" still seems to be the biggest individual hog, but I'm still not sure if its use coincides exactly with the spikes or if that's just normal.

[mujjuman]

I tried running with no pagefile at all (which incidentally made my system seem really responsive!) but still had the same issue. It isn't happening quite as frequently, but I'm not sure if that's because I've hit a lull, or if it really is happening less frequently. "C:\$LogFile (NTFS Volume Log)" still seems to be the biggest individual hog, but I'm still not sure if its use coincides exactly with the spikes or if that's just normal.

It runs faster with no pagefile because all the memory is stored in RAM.... its good if you have LOTS of RAM but I wouldnt recommend it in Vista.

I have the same issue... except with my keyboard.

As I type this message, nothing shows up for a second and then suddenly a sentence comes up... with spelling errors as well lol.

I have Vista Home Prem 32bit with 2GB of RAM.

What I do is that I close all background programs (like Firefox, AIM, AVG, etc.) and the problem seems to go away because of less RAM. I think its because my Firefox uses like 400-600MB of RAM since I have a few tabs + windows open (for research, reading later, etc).

I never had this problem in XP actually, and I used to leave the same number of windows + tabs open.

Reason why I wrote all this? Because maybe it applies to you... are you using a program that uses so much RAM at once?

[afreet]

Yeah, I've already switched back on the pagefile, but in any case the more important point to me was that the pagefile was obviously not causing the stuttering because it still happened even when there was no pagefile at all. I still saw the disk spikes, and I ran scandisk to check for any other possible physical problems and nothing popped up. Does anyone have any idea how to track down what IS causing the problem?

[Jigoku]

are you downloading anything from the internet while multi-tasking?

I had a similar problem with vista and it turned out to be zone

alarm firewall messing everything up. -.- I was going crazy for about 2 months until someone on neowin suggested that ZA might be the culprit.

switched to comodo and I've been happy ever since. :)

[afreet]

Nope, I've tried getting rid of everything I can. Also, I've tried downloading huge amounts of stuff and/or copying large files and I don't seem to get an increase in the amount of stuttering. I do seem to have to be doing something, but the workload on the computer doesn't seem to correlate with the amount of stuttering...

[Napalm Frog]

Maybe check out things like your motherboard drivers. I had massive issues with the SATA drivers murdering my X-Fi's audio. It was so random.

[McSmiggins]

From what you're saying, it's just a case of your hard drive's seeing a heck of a lot of usage. (I think the first two examples of what you're seeing are System Restore and the Shadow Copy Service, DON'T turn them off, they're very probably a symptom and not a cause)

As has been suggested, make sure you've got the latest drivers for your board (esp the nForce drivers)

Can you also confirm the other IDE/SATA devices in your system and which type of connector they're using?

Can you open device manager, then Storage and RAID controllers, then for each of the NVIDA nForce Serial ATA Controller's in there, double click them select Port 0 and Port 1, and run the speed test for each (you'll only get the option if there's a drive attached.) Also, for the one your drive's on, check that it's set to DMA Mode (I've never seen a SATA drive not run in DMA mode, but it can happen).

I'm going to assume you've got an IDE CD/DVD drive in there, so expand IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers, you'll see the IDE channels in there, double click each, and for the one the drive's on, check that it's set to DMA and not PIO

[afreet]

My first controller is at PCI bus 0, device 14, function 0, and has my hard drive (WDC WD3200AAKS-00YGA0) on port 0 (DMA mode is checked) and nothing on Port 1. The Port 0 speed test gives: Transfer mode is SATA 2-3G, write caching available, burst speed 90.3 (millions of bytes per second), sustained speed 69.0. My second controller is at device 15 and has nothing on it. My first IDE channel has both CD drives, and the second has nothing. I also have an external USB hard drive I back stuff up on. I really don't know what all of this stuff means, I know enough to make some guesses, so is this the type of info you wanted?

I just downloaded all the newest drivers and it made no difference at all. Also, I'm adding a picture of what the resource monitor looks like when this is happening. All those blue spikes are stutters, the other graphs are sometimes high, sometimes low, but it never seems make any difference. The green on the disk is also sometimes high and sometimes low, and still no difference. Sometimes the stutter come rapidly like this, sometimes they're nearly continuous and don't drop, and sometimes none at all for several minutes. The blue line on the disk can be high for a legitimate reason without causing a stutter, but the blue line is always high for a stutter. I don't understand why the hard drive would be getting a lot of use when everything else seems to indicate that it is not, or at the very least that the stuttering is independent of standard use.

[ikonizer]

Sounds like a driver conflict, or a rare indexing bug.

[afreet]

I turned off the Vista indexing service already when I installed Vista, are you talking about the actual file system indexing? As for drivers, I haven't installed anything recently, and when I just updated everything today it didn't change anything. Is there any way to test whether this could be the problem, or what specific drivers it could be?

[afreet]

Ok, I guess no one knows what's going on, but based on what I've said so far do you think there is any chance that if I buy a new hard drive that I would experience the same problem? This thing is driving me absolutely nuts, and I have no problem spending a little money and reinstalling Windows in order to fix it, but I wouldn't be too happy if even that didn't help :(

[mujjuman]

Yeah honestly I have no idea why this is happening... I dont think a new HDD would fix this. I think it has to do with your installation.

[x3lumin8x]

If you're running any AV software, disable it for a while.

[afreet]

Argh, now it's getting worse again... I went two days with no problems after I ctl-alt-del 'd everything, but then I tried playing a game and suddenly it came back. It definitely seems seems to be touched off by something processor/disk intensive being started, anything from starting the computer up to starting firefox or iTunes, but once it starts it doesn't stop when that program stops, or even within several minutes to several hours of the program stopping. At the moment it's going non-stop so that music sounds like when you're on the edge of a radio station's broadcast range, and when I'm typing firefox frequently stop responding altogether, until finally it catches back up and prints everything I just typed.

x3lumin8x: There is definitely no AV software running, no software of any kind beyond the OS running. I've even gone through and tried stopping as many services as I can, to no avail. I start firefox and iTunes back up after testing it so I can do something on my computer (well, iTunes doesn't really do anything because you can't listen to music like this...), but they're definitely not causing it.

mujjuman: When you say it has to do with my installation, do you mean OS or hardware? I can reinstall Vista from scratch, I can even afford to replace the HD, I can't really afford to replace all the hardware... I could also try vista 32bit instead of 64, but I have 4GBs of RAM and wouldn't want to make some of it useless :(

[ToneKnee]

Stuttering can be caused by overclocking hardware. There are certain CPU settings (as an example) which can pull back your computer clock speed if temperature runs to high. Stuff like Speed Step and other power saving settings can cause an odd effect. Try looking into your BIOS and see what your temperatures are and what CPU settings you have enabled.

[+chorpeac MVC]

Before you go out and buy anything new, do this. Since you are able to buy new hardware if needed and don't mind reinstallation, then perform a clean install with your current hardware and make sure to set the bios settings to defaults. In case there were any overclocking issues. Setting the bios to default should reinitialize the manufacturer's recommended settings.

Once you reinstall with the current hardware you have, slowly start adding the programs you use often and watch for slowness changes.

[KZWings]

Temporarily change out and try a different video card. Doesn't have to be anything special, put an old one in if you have it and use it for a day and see if that is the issue.

[afreet]

I wouldn't say I don't mind reinstallation, only that it's something I could do if I need to :) I can't really reinstall without getting a new drive anyway because I need somewhere to put everything while I reformat, my backup drive right now has important stuff but there's still plenty of other things I'd like to keep if I can.

I've never intentionally overclocked anything, and just checked the BIOS and saw nothing set up there. I reset it to default anyway, but nothing is different.

As for temperatures, when I use SpeedFan my cores seem to max out at about 55C during games, but usually run closer to 35-40C sometimes ranging up to 50C. My GPU goes from 55C normally to 65-70C during games, which sounds a bit hot... How do these values compare to normal running? I've had overheating problems in the past so now I actually leave the case open. In any case, the stuttering frequently occurs when the temps are lower, and doesn't necessarily occur when the temps are high, so while it happens more often when it's hot I think that may be a symptom rather than a cause. But I also don't know how precisely speedfan measures or if it captures everything, so it still could be.

[ToneKnee]

I wouldn't say I don't mind reinstallation, only that it's something I could do if I need to :) I can't really reinstall without getting a new drive anyway because I need somewhere to put everything while I reformat, my backup drive right now has important stuff but there's still plenty of other things I'd like to keep if I can.

I've never intentionally overclocked anything, and just checked the BIOS and saw nothing set up there. I reset it to default anyway, but nothing is different.

As for temperatures, when I use SpeedFan my cores seem to max out at about 55C during games, but usually run closer to 35-40C sometimes ranging up to 50C. My GPU goes from 55C normally to 65-70C during games, which sounds a bit hot... How do these values compare to normal running? I've had overheating problems in the past so now I actually leave the case open. In any case, the stuttering frequently occurs when the temps are lower, and doesn't necessarily occur when the temps are high, so while it happens more often when it's hot I think that may be a symptom rather than a cause. But I also don't know how precisely speedfan measures or if it captures everything, so it still could be.

Just reinstall on the current drive and let it rename the 'Windows' folders. It'll put all your current Documents, Program Files etc into a folder called 'Windows.old' on the root directory. That's what I do sometimes if I'm pressed for space. After that, I just remove the 'Windows.old' folder.