PC "stuttering"

fjon

My laptop is constantly "stuttering", which is quite annoying.
Every now and then everything freezes for a split second. This is most noticeable when listening to music as you can hear a gap.
Not sure where to start looking in order to fix this.
Anyone any ideas?

Oriel

Open the TaskManager and sort the task by processor usage. Find out what one jumps to the top every time it happens.
Failing that, close each task down, one bye one, until you close the one causing the problem.

S.

fjon

Thanks - that's helpful - I'll do that!

fjon

Ok, so after a bit of investigation it turns out every time my pc "Stutters" the process "System" jumps right up to the top of CPU usage. I also notice that "System Idle Process" takes up a huge amount of CPU usage. I'm currently trying to find something on Google, but without much success. Anyone any ideas?

SirLemonhead

System Idle Process is the amount of CPU you're NOT using. It's generally a high value.

Khannie

Check that you're not running out of system memory. "System" spiking can be caused by file I/O.

fjon

Khannie wrote:

Check that you're not running out of system memory. "System" spiking can be caused by file I/O.

Silly question, but how do I do that? Do you mean RAM?

irlrobins

Run this prog.

It will show you exactly what prog is causing the System spike.

I had same prob with system taking up too much resources. Turned out to be web cam capture program causing the problem. Wouldn't have picked it up using windows process explorer.

fjon

Cheers irlrobins!
I've installed it and monitord it for a while. System Idle Process is always on top for CPU usage, which MasterOfSolos says is normal. I can't see anything else unusual there. Like in Task Manager I see that every time there's a spike, System jumps right up to the top.

irlrobins

fjon wrote:

System Idle Process is always on top for CPU usage, which MasterOfSolos says is normal.

Yep that is normal. Should be around 95% most of the time.

Monitor it for a while and see.

fjon

irlrobins wrote:

Yep that is normal. Should be around 95% most of the time.

Monitor it for a while and see.

Yep - it's around 95% most of the time.
So the problem is definitely to do with "System". I'm reluctant to kill this process - I'm guessing bad things will happen

irlrobins

have you expanded System to see what child of it is causing probs?

Click the "+" beside system and it will show you all processes running under system. Should show the cpu usage for each one.

fjon

Oddly enough, I can't see anything under System causing probs. Only the top-level System shows up the large CPU usage. Here's a screenshot during one of the spikes:

irlrobins

yea see what you mean by nothing being listed, yet system is at 35% which is rather large....

I'm stumped.....

Khannie

/me increases his bet on File I/O.

Open up the task manager (start->run->taskmgr <enter>) and the RAM memory usage will be shown there.

This is an odd one allright.

Is it a pentium M chip? They underclock when they're not being used, right? Could it be some other hardware issue?

fjon

Yes, it's a Petium Centrino chip.
In task manager there is nothing hoggin up a huge amount of memory. Internet Explorer and Outlook are the only ones using over 50,000 memory.

Stephen

Is your hard disk by any chance running in PIO mode? If so change it to DMA.
I think Khannie's right with file I/O on this.

to check, open up device manager and go to properties on your IDE channels, and then to the "advanced settings" tab.

Oriel

Before you do anything, close Norton AntiVirus and anything else by Symantec. See if that makes a difference.

Khannie

fjon wrote:

In task manager there is nothing hoggin up a huge amount of memory.

How much free memory is there though? And how much "swap file" is in use?

As Stephen said, make sure you're not in PIO mode (horrors!).

fjon

Stephen wrote:

Is your hard disk by any chance running in PIO mode? If so change it to DMA.
I think Khannie's right with file I/O on this.

to check, open up device manager and go to properties on your IDE channels, and then to the "advanced settings" tab.

Nope, it's set to "DMA if available".

sinecurea wrote:

Before you do anything, close Norton AntiVirus and anything else by Symantec. See if that makes a difference.

Unfortunately the software is installed by work (I am using a laptop they have given me). The most I can do is temporarily disable he firewall, everything else is greyed out.

Khannie wrote:

How much free memory is there though? And how much "swap file" is in use?

As Stephen said, make sure you're not in PIO mode (horrors!).

It's running on 22% CPU usage max. Not sure how to check the swap file though!

I decided to try the laptop at home. Strangely the issue seems to have gone, or at least greatly improved.
So the issue must be network related - is that possible?

Khannie

Definitely possible. Probable even. Do you have a wireless link to network drives?

fjon

Khannie wrote:

Definitely possible. Probable even. Do you have a wireless link to network drives?

No, I connect to the LAN directly.
At home I have tried connecting both with wireless or direct, and it seems the stutter doesn't happen. I connect to the network via VPN, and it also doesn't happen. So it only happens when I connect to the network directly.