Random CPU spikes causing annoying stuttering!!

[Sumanji]

Hey,

Just recently I have started to get ~0.5s lockups every few minutes at random intervals. This causes a stuttery mouse, or stuttery music in WinAmp or games. When I looked at the CPU usage I found that this corresponded to little peaks in the graph.



My full system spec is linked to in my sig. Recent additions have been my new TFT, a Radeon 9800 Pro (and Catalyst 4.2), and possibly something that Norton 2004 has automatically updated?!

Please someone help me its driving me nuts!

Cheers,

Suman

[streetster]

have a look at the processes bit, and see whats suddenly jumping in cpu usage...

mark

[Sumanji]

I tried arranging the processes by CPU usage (so "System Idle Processes" is at the top) and then watching for one task which shoots up the list briefly when Winamp stutters. However after several tries I still didnt spot the offending item

Virus/worm maybe??

Cheers,

Suman

[joshwa]

right click my computer,
go to manage
and check the event viewer
and then look in the application log and system log
you should be able to see an error at the times when the spike happens

Josh

[Sumanji]

Thanks Josh, I'll give that a go and report back!

Cheers,

Suman

[G4Z]

I had a similar problem and it turned out to be zonealarm causing it. uninstalled ZA and installed sygate, problem solved.

[Sumanji]

Ok I think I've nailed it (well at least found the problem anyway). This error consistently pops up ever 3 to 10 minutes (random intervals).



Anyone know what the hell it means?!

Cheers,

Suman

[Rave]

I don't know what that means, or if it's the problem. When this happened to me it was because my HD had defaulted to PIO mode, it's worth checking that this hasn't happened to you. Have a look in device manager at the IDE channel your disk is on and check it's still in DMA mode.

Rich :¬)