Random Computer 'Jerking'

[[R4A]Bigman]

Hi,

I've had this problem in the past as well - notably when I first got this motherboard, cpu etc. It kinda went away after a while of messing around with drivers etc, though I don't know if I ever actually properly fixed it, or it just didn't show up the same as it used to, and either way I don't remember what I did.

The problem is this - my system seems to temporarily hang roughly every minute for perhaps a quarter or half a second. It is most noticeable when playing music via Winamp - the song will make a stuttering sound before continuing fine. It seems to affect videos too (playing using BSPlayer).

EDIT - I've tested it with my onboard sound (which is what I usually use) and my Logitech USB Headset. The only difference is that the music will actually cut out with the headset then come back in again instead of stuttering.

The only real things I've changed recently are removing my 250GB secondary hard disk and replacing it with a 500GB one. Also I've recently connected up a secondary monitor. I can't see how either of these things would mess me up, but I'm open to suggestions of any kind!

My system specs:

AMD Athlon 64 3200+ @ 2.6Ghz (260x10) - 1.584V
DFi Infinity nf4 Motherboard (skt939)
2x512MB Corsair TwinX DDR RAM PC3200 @ 185Mhz CAS2 3-2-7-9-16 T1 timing
Abit ATi Radeon X850XT PE (Omega 3.8.291)

Samsung Spinpoint P80 160GB SP1614C (Primary disk - swap file is 1GB and located on this disk only)
Samsung Spinpoint-T 500GB HD501LJ (Secondary disk)

2x Samsung SyncMaster 913N monitors

I'm running Windows XP SP2
Winamp v5.32
BSPlayer v1.36

Current voltages (according to SpeedFan):
CPU Core: 1.58V
Chipset: 1.52V
+3.3V: 3.25V
+5V: 5.89V
+12V: 11.52V
+5V: 5.00V
Vbat: 3.06V

I know the voltages look pretty poor, but they have always been that bad, and my computer is stable, so I'm inclined to either disagree with the readings or just ignore the fact that they are pretty off.


Any help/comments/suggestions are extremely welcome!

[Dreaming]

Erm, it could be sound drivers. Checked on google and theres one or two links where they've had a similar problem. Have you tried cleaning them off then putting the latest ones back on?

Possibly codecs? http://www.planetamd64.com/index.php?showtopic=25000

[Sumanji]

I've had this problem in the past! Can't remember what I did to sort it out though I think it might have been a reformat

One outside chance though, what chipset driver version are you using? And do you have the nVidia Forceware Network Manager thingy installed?

[[R4A]Bigman]

I'm using the absolute latest nVidia platform drivers - though the problem has occurred across the board with them. The reason I'm sceptical about the sound drivers is because two completely separate sound adapters have experienced problems - but you never know I guess.

6.86 nForce 4 AMD Platform Drivers

I could try completely uninstalling the drivers and reinstalling them I suppose - I've only been installing over the top of old versions so far.

Also I don't have nVidia Forceware Network Manager installed at all - its more of a pain than its worth. I do have the SM Bus and IDE controllers installed tho.

[Sumanji]

Hey dude,

Uninstall your Forceware, Audio, nForce drivers etc., install Driver Cleaner, then restart in safe mode and use DC to purge out all the old rubbish. Then try and reinstall all the latest drivers and see if that makes a difference. If it still happens then you might have to do a full reformat to get rid of the issue

Suman

P.S. Do you get "blips" in CPU usage graph in the task manager every few seconds? If so, try and time the blip to a program in the processes list which suddenly uses 100% CPU. I think this is how I found the culprit last time!

[kalniel]

What anti-virus are you running, and does it have an email-scanner?

AVG's email scanner causes very similar problems.

[[R4A]Bigman]

Ooo - interesting one from kalniel.

I run Thunderbird and AVG Antivirus with the email scanner. All my email updates every minute (about as often as I get these problems) and AVG will be scanning for this stuff in the background.

Do you know if there are any particular fixes for these problems (other than disabling the email scanner of course)?

I've got both loaded at the moment, but I can't get the problem to recur - it seems to have gone away for the moment. I guess its not a _definite issue_ rather than an intermittent one.

[kalniel]

I don't know of any particular fix - I had to just turn off the AVG email scanning service on both my and my gf's computers to stop a similar problem. The on access scan never caused me any problems though so I leave that on.

If the problem comes back, try disabling the email scanner or if you really do need it, I'd suggest trying AVAST instead.

[[R4A]Bigman]

After the problem recurred - I have been slowly been closing my programs and processes and seeing if that fixed it.

I eventually traced the problem back to SpeedFan.

Within SpeedFan I slowly turned off more and more of the functionality until the problem stopped. I've traced it down to any access of my second harddrive's SMART information.

This seems to me as a very odd problem. Any suggestions on how I might be able to fix this? For now I've just disabled SMART access on that drive.