A very long system lag

[YoloSwag]

So about six months ago, my computer started to exhibit symptoms of old age.

A few lags here and there, sometimes a reboot, high temperatures, etc.,

But most of these can be resolved easily like driver updates and cleaning.

About 2 months ago the problem went to a whole new level. I experienced some sort of system lag.
- What happens is that everything stops, you could then hear the sound loop and everything in this computer hits max clocks (i.e. GPU and CPU) and then the system goes back to normal, no crashes etc.
- My initial suspect was it was a faulty video card. Since this only happens when I play games and not the usual non-gaming stuff.

So I cleaned everything (Software and Hardware). I did a fresh install of my Windows 7 64-bit. And for a few days everthing was fine until it happened again. But this time it takes about 3 minutes.
I contacted EVGA then they said it's probably a PSU thing, I used to have a Thermaltake LitePower 550W PSU by the way, and they told me to do a couple of tests.

I ran benchmarks, GPU and CPU was at full load, in fact my GTX 660 SC went beyond the boost clock, but the funny thing is...there's no crash! AMAZING!

I ran that Memtest thing, no prob. I checked the voltages on my PSU via BIOS, everything was good, not even mini fluctuations were present.

I then ran the system on safe mode, everything fine. But now, the system hangs randomly, I mean that when I play games, even those old games, it hangs from time to time then resumes, but when the system's idle, I can't believe it but sometimes it still hangs on it's own

It was so frustrating that I decided to send my GPU out for RMA. The guy in the shop then tells me it's more likely a PSU problem, but I paid no attention to it. Because I've experienced a PSU problem before, crashing, blue screen, rebooting and the like. But in this case it was a really long lag.

Went back to my house, removed the driver, installed a driver for my intel HD2000 iGPU. Everything was fine until...

I experienced a blue screen yeah, now I laughed like a crazy guy. After 3 weeks of that I got a really good PSU. It's an FSP Raider 650W. It has a Silver Efficiency Certification. SLi certification and other things.

That was yesterday by the way. I then played some old games, because it's what my iGPU can handle

Everything was good in my system. Not enough noise to be heard from half a meter away. Games were good.

Yesterday I got Half-Life 2 and Ep2.


I played it just now and guess what happened?

That's right! THE SAME THING HAPPENED AGAIN

Can someone please tell me what's wrong?

My system specs are listed on my account.

[SUMMONER]

Have you checked your hard drive for bad sectors?

If Windows has difficulty reading a file it can cause everything to pause temporarily.

Download/run HDTune.

Check the health tab for yellow/red marked lines, to see if SMART has found a fault. Then run a full Error Scan, to check the drive's storage space for physical defects.

Also, give all the SATA cables a little push, to make sure they are properly connected.

e.g.

[YoloSwag]

Good idea. I remembered doing a disk check but I don't think I checked the other drive.

I'll be posting here after I get to test it. Thanks

[YoloSwag]

Okay, I've finished all those tests. Everything came out clean, not even a yellow line.

I haven't experienced the lag again since yesterday. I've been playing games for a while now and everything seems to be fine.

I couldn't test it yet with a GPU like my GTX 660 that I sent out for RMA.

What else could cause such a lag? By the way, you were on to something about disk errors, I remember my old pc with just 2x40GB HDDs (40GB was kinda big back then ) and each time I played, the same thing happens. But at that time, it was really a couple of bad discs.

I have 3 fans in my system, one I forgot to mention, had trouble running smoothly for a certain amount of time without my knowledge, I only learned about it when my PC won't turn on.
I noticed a huge build-up of dust, which I cleaned like I mentioned in my first post. Could a faulty fan be a suspect here? But it has nothing to do with what's going on in the motherboard because I switched the connector from the 3-pin on the motherboard to plugging it in to a MOLEX connector. The fan by the way, runs fine now, although I think it slowed down a bit since 3 years ago

[SUMMONER]

Since you have already tried a new PSU and are now using the (on-board) Intel GFX, there are 3 things that I can suggest trying.

1. reset the BIOS to "Optimized Defaults"
this can sometimes cure odd behaviour

2. unplug any external (USB/Firewire/eSATA etc.) and internal devices that you don't essentially need during testing
I have seen dodgy USB devices cause all kinds of strange behaviour

3. clean off and then re-apply heat conductive paste to the processor (the pea method)
Intel processors are very very good at heat management, and have the ability to dynamically throttle the processor speed as and when it (thinks it) is starting to overheat.

[YoloSwag]

Since you have already tried a new PSU and are now using the (on-board) Intel GFX, there are 3 things that I can suggest trying.

1. reset the BIOS to "Optimized Defaults"
this can sometimes cure odd behaviour

2. unplug any external (USB/Firewire/eSATA etc.) and internal devices that you don't essentially need during testing
I have seen dodgy USB devices cause all kinds of strange behaviour

3. clean off and then re-apply heat conductive paste to the processor (the pea method)
Intel processors are very very good at heat management, and have the ability to dynamically throttle the processor speed as and when it (thinks it) is starting to overheat.

Thank you. I've tried that BIOS thing before and nothing much happened.

So far, I haven't experienced it. I've been playing all night. Maybe it was just a random thing. I'll try replacing the thermal paste though.

[OilSheikh]

Run Scandisk on your Hard drive/s

[virtuo]

Have you got any virtual disk programs (Daemon tools etc?) running, or an optical drive?

I had a dodgy SATA bluray drive a while back that was causing long hangups as you describe, and I've known DT to cause system stability issues with some copy protections on legit games.

Worth a look

[DanceswithUnix]

Post a grab of the SMART values, we might be able to tell from that despite no yellow highlights. I suspect it is the hard drive. The "re-allocated sector count" should be a low number and more importantly not increasing over time. There are spare sectors though, so a few in here isn't scary. The "Current Pending Sector Count" is the bad one. Those are pending being mapped out, which most drives won't do until you try to write to them.

Further more, it could be that the act of scanning the drive has allowed it to patch itself up and it will behave for a while. This is why re-installing Windows can make a machine behave for a while as new data written to the drive should be readable without those hangs. If the drive is ill, then it will start getting bad sectors again and the problem will come back.

[YoloSwag]

Have you got any virtual disk programs (Daemon tools etc?) running, or an optical drive?

I had a dodgy SATA bluray drive a while back that was causing long hangups as you describe, and I've known DT to cause system stability issues with some copy protections on legit games.

Worth a look

Not a thing. Just some regular programs, Anti-Virus, Steam, Graphics Drivers and the rest.

[YoloSwag]

Post a grab of the SMART values, we might be able to tell from that despite no yellow highlights. I suspect it is the hard drive. The "re-allocated sector count" should be a low number and more importantly not increasing over time. There are spare sectors though, so a few in here isn't scary. The "Current Pending Sector Count" is the bad one. Those are pending being mapped out, which most drives won't do until you try to write to them.

Further more, it could be that the act of scanning the drive has allowed it to patch itself up and it will behave for a while. This is why re-installing Windows can make a machine behave for a while as new data written to the drive should be readable without those hangs. If the drive is ill, then it will start getting bad sectors again and the problem will come back.

Here's a picture of both my drives -

and


But the thing is it both scans returned negative like I said. I think this would turn out to be a system upgrade all-in-all haha
Power Supply Replacement, then next would probably be a hard drive, then a new CPU cooler/CPU itself, new memory, new motherboard, then to my surprise, I've just build myself a new system hahaha

But I really hope this gets fixed

*UPDATE*

Okay, I'm experiencing it in just regular usage, not just under load
It happened again last night then twice today. I did a disk check, no errors or whatsoever.

[YoloSwag]

OK. I thank you all for your suggestions, even for those who only viewed this thread

It turned out CPU temp was hitting 80C, I didn't notice it at all since I can't hear the fan (Usually I can hear it but only during full load like when rendering stuff) for some reason, the fan's RPM doesn't even go near 2000 RPM, at 80C it's still ~1400. I tried changing the BIOS setting for the CPU fan, from Auto to PWM to Voltage to Max. Max did keep the load temperature under 80C but I knew I had to replace that thermal paste.

I got to replace it (finally). When I checked it, it seems like there's hardly any left (well, I haven't changed it in 2 years so no surprises there ). Anyway, changed it, and load temps are just around 59C which is well below that burning 80C. I changed that fan settings back to PWM too.

And I got my GTX 660 back from EVGA. I gave them my blower type GTX 660 SC. Then after that RMA thing they gave me a brand new dual cooler one, thank God and thanks to EVGA too.

I could've opted for a better cooling solution for the CPU but I thought I'll just get an upgrade first then resort to a better cooler than intel's stock one

[acluacs]

Hopefully thats all sorted, but if you do experience more problems probably worth also checking the system logs.

[YoloSwag]

OK! HERE'S THE LAST THING THAT HAPPENED AND THE SOLUTION!!! I JUST FOUND OUT JUST NOW.

The lags came back actually after that cooler thing so I gave up looking for solutions. It occurs when the GPU uses OpenGL, it didn't happen back then because I was only playing DirectX games.
I suspected OpenGL because somehow when you enable that multi-monitor thing, Nvidia uses something of OpenGL for the final output - I'm guessing this is why I can play games while watching a movie on my HDTV hooked to my PC.

But of course you can't just remove OpenGL so I suspected it was something with the drivers. I looked at the GeForce site in some articles relating to how to make your computer run faster.
Of course there's nothing there in that article that experienced users don't already know, but then I remembered I've installed a bunch of software for the past months so I opened up MSConfig.

And there I saw it, some intel programs running in the services and startup, I wondered what it was. I googled the names and then found out it was part of the intel video driver.
THE INTEL VIDEO DRIVER!!!

Don't think that I'm a noob in driver installation stuff. I uninstall drivers in safe mode first then restart then install them in safe mode again. It might be some bad programming on the side of intel. Sucks. I blamed my GPU, my PSU, my CPU, my HDD, and my RAM.

Anyways to anyone who experiences extreme lagging and sound looping and a system stuck up, I suggest checking MSConfig first to see if there are conflicting drivers.

My thanks to all who were active in this thread

[acluacs]

Wow, I guess the intel driver was dropping back into software mode hence desperately slow. Glad its sorted.