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I have been having this problem for a few weeks now and after trawling through countless posts nothing has seemed to help, so I post my question, here for you all.

While running any kind of program (from graphically intensive games to iTunes to even browsing youtube) I experience small jutters or freezes that last about half a second. Usually in a spurt of anywhere between four and six jutters over a ten second period. They will stop for thirty seconds, then come again.

It's frustrating me to no end. I have recently cleaned all dust from my computer, am an avid computer builder so I am sure all hardware is in place correctly, it's not overheating and nothing has been recently added.

When this issue occurs everything freezes for that half second including sound, creating a a 'blargh' noise. Not sure if that helps, but kind of made me laugh to type it in.

All drivers have been updated to latest versions.

Cheers in advance.


Specs:

  • Win7 64bit running on Intel SSD
  • Intel i7 960 @ 3.2GHz
  • 12GB RAM
  • 950w Corsair PSU
  • G1.Guerrilla (rev. 1.0) Mobo
  • nVidia Geforce GTX 680
  • 3x SATA Drives (2x 1TB 1x 500GB)
  • G19 & G9 Logitech K/B and Mouse.
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  • 1
    What antivirus software have you got? Some (I'm looking at you, Symantec) are (in)famous for their effects on the system. Feb 12, 2013 at 8:25
  • None, I run Spybot Search & Destroy. I also access all emails etc... from external servers, not directly onto this.
    – Kieran
    Feb 12, 2013 at 8:36
  • Have you run memtest, Prime95 and FurMark to eliminate the question of a slowly degrading hardware? Feb 12, 2013 at 8:43
  • Just ran memtest now, every has come back clear. System Integrity check is fine, MRT was fine as with Spybot S&D. Haven't shamed the other two out yet. Going through event log and uninstalling all programs causing errors currently. Will run those tests after uninstall.
    – Kieran
    Feb 12, 2013 at 8:50
  • I would bet that you recently installed some software that is running an update check at regular intervals. Check Task Scheduler. Feb 12, 2013 at 12:24

5 Answers 5

2

I'm getting this same issue -- stops responding for half a second, text delays appearing as I type, etc. I looked at my Resource Monitor -- and lo and behold! The CPU "Maximum Frequency" keeps bouncing up and down, at about the same tempo as the surging lockups I'm experiencing.

I went into my Power Savings Settings and modified the Minimum Processor State from 5% to 50%. This seems to have fixed it. For now.

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  • in my case I had to change it to 70% to make it stop "shutter". (and yet, it keeps "shutter" once every few minutes). any idea why is it happening? I never had to use this sort of 'fix' even on very weak hardware
    – itsho
    Sep 29, 2014 at 18:36
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I'm having the same issue. My hardware is installed properly, system is up to date, and no resource utilization seems abnormal. Here's what I would recommend trying:

It's possible that this could be caused by a bad sector on your hard disk. Check your event viewer (run: eventvwr) to see if there are any errors about bad blocks. If so, schedule a check disk by running chkdsk /f /r from an admin command prompt to check your disk on the next boot.

Source: Computer Freezes for a 2 or 3 seconds.

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I suspect that the problem is something inherent in Windows 7 (and probably other variations as well). Exactly what it is, I don't know, but perhaps this will shed some light on the issue.

I took a brand-new Windows 7 Pro 64bit machine, built-up from scratch with absolutely no added applications. Not even anti-virus software. The Hardware is an i7-6700 CPU on an Asus H270 motherboard. One hard drive and 16 GB RAM.

I turned off the automatic Internet time sync. and turned off the periodic check for updates.

I installed git-bash (git for Windows) so I would have a bash shell. I wrote a script that did an http post to a server that is guaranteed to respond within 31.25 msec to that post. If you issue a post immediately after receiving a response to the previous post, it takes about 31 msec to get the next post. The script timed the intervals between the posts running in a tight for-loop.

If the client is running without any delays then one would expect the average interval to be 31 msec. If there are some delays from time to time that might stretch out to 40 msec or so, and then "catch up" on the next post with an interval of about 20 msec. In fact, using the same bash script on a CentOS 7 machine (with a much slower CPU and only 2 cores) I measured an average of 31 ms, a minimum of 13 and a maximum of 49 over several hours of operation.

But using a Windows machine (as described above) as the client, the minimum was 31 msec, the average 59 msec, and the maximum 1092 msec. About once or twice an hour (perhaps more?) the Windows system would "go away" for about a second. (Not only that, but the Windows system could not keep up with the full 32 Hz rate that the server can provide.)

I think it's just something we need to live with!

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This sort of issue can have many causes, so I would start with some basic diagnostics.

Leave Windows Task Manager running so you have something you can check next time you see this behavior. The resource monitor provides more information than basic applications, processes tabs.

Load Windows Task Manager (Ctrl + Alt + Escape)

Go to Performance Tab

Click Resource Monitor Button

Next time your PC freezes, check the resource monitor and check CPU, Memory and Disk I/O levels, hopefully you'll see a process that looks like a likely culprit, and you can investigate more specific fixes from there.

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The CPU bouncing may just be the power-saving feature. CPUs regularly drop their frequency when not under heavy use to reduce heat and save power and improve longevity. It will look in the task manager like a CPU usage spike, which can be frustratingly difficult to differentiate from actual program lag spikes.

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