My PC is messing with me..

[Rob Williams]

Alright, this is going to be a difficult problem to fix.. I can tell.

Today I installed the new Need For Speed demo, which seems amazing. It would likely be better if it ran smoothly. The problem is, the game will run smooth, but every few seconds it will halt for like a half second, and continue. Then a few seconds later, the same thing will happen.

Intrigued, I tested out some other games, and sure enough the exact same thing happens. I checked a variety of things, including installed drivers.. I reverted to the latest official ones. I do have virtual memory enabled, which was the first thing I checked.

Games will even do this when the computer is not overclocked at *all*, running 2.0GHz and stock GPU. I closed a few of the largest programs that usually give me problems, but that's not it either.

I will keep tinkering, but if anyone has any ideas, please let me know!

 

[madmat]

Open task manager with the comptuer sitting idle and look at the cpu usage, is it getting polled every so often? If it is then go into processes and look at it to see what's polling the cpu for those cycles and kill the process.

If you can't find anything try downloading and running HiJackThis and looking in the log for anything that's untoward as it will show every running process on your PC, it could be spyware of some sort and if you have Sys Mech's system guard alerter running in your tray, right click and close it.

 

[Rob Williams]

Yeah, I have to check a few things like that when I have the time. I'm wondering if it's my GPU to be honest.. If I get ambition later on, I may throw in the 6800GT and see if I have the same problems. That should be a clear sign of whether the 7800GT is farked or not.

 

[madmat]

I'm of the opinion that it's not the GPU, if it was you'd likely be seeing corruption in game or be having it crash or crash back to the desktop.

I'm still of the opinion it's related to either the O.S., the CPU or the chipset.

 

[Blumen]

Try some different vid drivers... i noticed this with some other drivers before i updated....

 

[Rob Williams]

Will have to try this today if I can find the time. I'll let ya know.

 

[Buck-O]

madmat is on the ball.

There is probibly some erant process runnign in the background thats fubaring your setup.

Biggestt hing to do is try and remember what has been put on your system between the demo and the last time your played a game on your system. Chances are you will find the issue preaty quickly.

Take madmats advice, and let us know.

 

[Blumen]

If you have norton going, try disabling the active scanner on that as well... my roomate used to have that problem.