Computer freezes for a split second then carries on

[El Moose Monstero]

I've got an intermittent problem that I don't know how to resolve; every now and again, my PC will start suddenly slowing, crashing for a second then resuming its functions, almost a stuttering in its frequency - once every 2 seconds or so.

I'm running a quad core Q6600 processor, a Geforce 8600 512Mb, 2 gb ram, decent enough HD and Vista, but with minimal other tasks running at the time of these problems.

I've got a working virus scanner and firewall and scans come up clean everytime, is there anything else that might cause such a problem? Graphics card overheating or something?

[Braedley]

I'm baffled. There's no reason that hardware like that should be slowing down. Check your temperatures, but even that doesn't seem likely to me.

[Uraniun235]

Sounds like a hardware issue to me; if you want to eliminate software problems as a likely cause, boot up a Knoppix CD and play around with it for awhile.

Could be a faulty power supply, or faulty RAM - run a memory test program overnight (take your pick). Or a bad motherboard - check motherboard capacitors, make sure none are bulging at the top.

[Mad]

I don't know if this is still a problem on modern operating systems, but I've experienced intermittent freezing in the past due to a dying hard disk, as the disk attempted to shuffle data around from bad sectors and the OS was waiting for input.

[Netko]

I'm in agreement with the above posters - the first thing should be to check the hard drive (SeaTools) and RAM (memtest86). If they check out, the likelyhood that it is a hardware problem diminishes greatly, in which case a reinstall might be in order (after antiviral and antimalware scans).

[El Moose Monstero]

I did a bit of digging, I've not run the various tools yet as the freezing is getting slightly in the way; a happenstance bit of googling said that vista may freeze when the hard disk is in full use. The resource allocation tool thing that vista has seemed to be telling me that when the freezes happened, my "active time" for the disk was 100%. Trouble is, I don't know what that means, should HDs run at 100%?

I ran Seatools, but I got a 'given path format not supported message' and it didn't seem to get any further than that.

[Darwin]

I did a bit of digging, I've not run the various tools yet as the freezing is getting slightly in the way; a happenstance bit of googling said that vista may freeze when the hard disk is in full use. The resource allocation tool thing that vista has seemed to be telling me that when the freezes happened, my "active time" for the disk was 100%. Trouble is, I don't know what that means, should HDs run at 100%?

I ran Seatools, but I got a 'given path format not supported message' and it didn't seem to get any further than that.

with 2g of ram, it shouldn't be hitting the HDD like that. here's something that may help.

go into advanced properties and remove the swapfile. reboot, defrag the drive.

Try it for a while like this. If you run into problems with the swapfile disabled (you probably won't), recreate the swap file at a fixed 2048mb (same minimum and maximum size) so that it doesn't waste time resizing the file.

[El Moose Monstero]

This would be the paging file on Vista I assume?

[Xon]

with 2g of ram, it shouldn't be hitting the HDD like that. here's something that may help.

Wrong.

If it hits a single bad sector, it can take upto 3 seconds for the harddrive to give up and report an error to the OS. If this occurs during a paging operation the entire computer grinds to a halt because any processes waiting on that IO operation never get a chance to run.

Try it for a while like this. If you run into problems with the swapfile disabled (you probably won't), recreate the swap file at a fixed 2048mb (same minimum and maximum size) so that it doesn't waste time resizing the file.

Dont listen to this fucking "advice".

Leave the pagefile at automatically managed. If the pagefile needs to be expanded, you are already going to be taking a hit from simply having to read/write to the disk. The extra 5-10 milliseconds expanding the pagefile is nothing on the ~100 milliseconds of IO.

[Darwin]

You don't have to be an ass. Especially since I know what I'm fucking doing.

Disabling the pagefile can help diagnose the problem.

A fixed pagefile size is just a good idea to keep the file itself from becoming fragmented, slowing the system down later on.

If his disk has bad sectors, that should be diagnosed with a scan, and replaced if necessary.

[Uraniun235]

Moose, before you run any disk scans, make sure that any important data on that hard drive is backed up.