Strange lagging and freezing

[Biscuit]

Specs

E6420
7900GTX
40Gb IDE drive
DVD RW IDE
Foxconn 945G 7MD
2GB DDR2 PC5400
400watt generic PSU
old 19" CRT monitor (HP 92?)

Problem
When using the computer there is a slight freeze up every 20 seconds or so which is most noticable in games. Initially he thought he had cracked it when switching to his backup hard drive and removing an old problematic one but there still seems to be problems. Graphics card & mouse have been replaced and therefore ruled out. Various diff motherboard drivers has been tried and the bios has been updated to the latest one.

I had a feeling it could be the PSU with it being generic. Another thing which suggests this to me is that when he has a lot of usb devices plugged in he sometimes cant boot up the computer. It could also be the motherboard is dodgy though so he doesnt want to go and buy a new PSU when its actually the mobo as budget is tight. He has no way of substituting the PSU or the motherboard to check them unfortuately. Another suggestion he has been givin is it could be the monitor not refreshing properly, but again he has no spares.

Anyone any ideas?

Edit: On COD2 when the FPS is limited to 125 it lags more than at 250.

[scrandman]

400watt generic PSU

Bingo, but I figure you already know that.

[Biscuit]

Yeah thats what i thought but i dunno... u sure a crappy PSU wud cause the graphics to lag every 20 or 30 seconds and what about the different FPS thing?

EDIT: oh yeah just remembered another time he has problems. When burning a disk the computer runs really really slowly

[Thorsson]

Well I'd suspect malware with these sort of problems, but that's quite a powerful system to be running of some unknown PSU, especially if it's OC'd.

One other possibility. I used to have a friend whose PC was always running slow. Every time I looked it was because he had an army of programs running in the background. He was an inveterate installer of every "free" program offered on the internet.

[Biscuit]

no hes running from a fresh format, pretty sure its nothing software/os based. There isnt any overclocking going on.

I have advised him to get the corsair HX psu regardless as hes gunna need it sooner or later but as i said, budget is tight.

[Clunk]

Could also be the hard drive on its way out.

Have you checked it for errors?

[Thorsson]

Can't see it being the PSU, as it doesn't seem to be related to power draw. That puts it into the camp of mobo/CPU.

Edit: Actually, maybe it's the DVD. Accounts for burn, and does game need the CD/DVD in the drive?

Edit2: Another thought is network. I had a laptop where this was the problem and the symptoms were quite similar.

[Biscuit]

just started pc up it loaded the bios up really really slow then wen it got to windows xp logo it started to faid the logo in fukin slow as **** after loading the windows logo it come up with blue screen and crashed so i disconnected external hdd and it loaded perfect no slowness atall without external hdd. i know ur afk atm but just thought id let u know b4 u go offline

i just played 2142 for like 20 mins it crashed i rebooted and went to play 2142 again it loads map and mouse wont move wtf?

He sent me this this morning.

Clunk - he did thinkit was an old hard drive he was running and he is now using a backup HDD, i suppose they could both be on the way out but i guess its unlikely

Thorsson - Its not network issues as on COD2 the lagometer shows the up and downstream to be fine. COD2 doesnt need the CD but bf2142 does.

He also just told me that he only has the 4 pin 12v adaptor pluggged into the 8pin on the motherboard. Aparently the manual says this is ok but...

Budget is around £100 to get this back on its feet

[Clunk]

He sent me this this morning.

Clunk - he did thinkit was an old hard drive he was running and he is now using a backup HDD, i suppose they could both be on the way out but i guess its unlikely

Missed that bit sorry, but it does sound like hard drive trouble

[Biscuit]

so should i advise him to go for new PSU & HDD if so which PSU (ebuyer preferably) i was thinking antec? Is there anyway of testing the CPU/mobo b4 windows boots up, kinda like what memtest does?

[Biscuit]

update: he unplugged the DVD drive and fiddled about with the memory, one stick was giving very strange readings and the other was giving pretty normal readings. Witht he normal stick things seemed to be fine. Il tell him to send his memory back and get it replaced and buy a new PSU so that can be taken out of the the equation alltogether.

[scrandman]

If buying from ebuyer, go for a Seasonic PSU. They do a nice 430W for a decent price. Some of the earlier Antecs have a pretty bad reputation for reliability (when they were made by CWT). The more recent Antecs (NeoHE / Earthwatts) are made by Seasonic and should be a good deal more reliable.