Glitching? Pausing? WTF?

Deliverance XXV

Hey guys, weird one here for you.
About every two to three hours my computer will pause/glitch for about a second, whether it is during music or games.
Music will skip and movies/games will stutter for that second?
Not exactly annoying yet but I know in the future it will become so!
Machine is overclocked now but this started after I built the PC and before
I overclocked the machine.
So has anyone ideas as to what it may be??
Bios settings? Overheating?

Thanks for any help lads.-J

Anti

Sounds like a skipping hard drive to me. Run HDTach on your drives. And look for any dips in performance.

hshortt

Also check the power settings to see if it might be trying to go to sleep at that stage.

Cheers

Deliverance XXV

Thanks for very fast replies lads, will try all above suggestions, will report back!

Deliverance XXV

Hey!
Ok HDTach wont operate for me as I have Vista??
As soon as I execute popup comes up saying 2000 or XP is required so that is out of the question!
There was a power saving option ON so I turned that off and time will
tell if that was the problem?
Thanks again lads, will let you know how I fare out.

Stephen

Vista's default power saving settings are fairly aggressive, it turns off hard disks after only a few minutes of inactivity. My machine has 4 hard drives so this was getting very annoying very fast with a slight pause every time it stopped and started a disk, so I set it not to power off hard disks. No problem since.

L31mr0d

hmm... do you have any sort of defragmenter or performance booster installed that runs automatically?

Deliverance XXV

Nothing that runs automatically,
so far no pauses/stalls with power saving settings turned off,
Hard drive power off was set for twenty mins, so I extended that to 100 mins so that may have a positive outcome.
Will update!

Anti

Or even a spyware/Av software

Deliverance XXV

I run SuperantiSpyware, Adaware 2007, Spybot, Windows Defender, Spyware Blaster, Spyware Terminator, AVG AV and Windows Firewall!
Would these really affect the HDD?

Anti

Hahah. yes.. You honestly dont need them all. Git rid of windows firewall and windows defender, they are junk. Get rid of spywareblaster and spyware terminator too. Oh and superspyware.

Spybot, AVG AV, and the AVG firewall or perhaps the komodo firewall is all you will need. ANything else is coutneractive.

Deliverance XXV

Hmmm I wanted to use the ZoneAlarm firewall but cant as still waiting on Vista update, but is the comodo one any good?
Surely that isn't the cause of the skips?
Still no skipping as of yet...


EDIT: There might be a hell of a lot of "junk" running there but the only thing I contracted since my first PC
( bout three years ago) was invasive cookies!!

Anti

No i doubt it causes the skipping unless you have some type of active scans scheduled to run every now and then. Then reason you dont have them all installed is they can block each other out. One AV program, 2 Spyware/malware and only 1 firewall.

Deliverance XXV

Duly noted! Thanks man