Frequent Pauses

Hello the technicians of Fakku!
I need help with my computer :(
I need you to identify which hardware is wrong with my computer

First of all, the problem with my computer is that it stutters and freezes at different times.

1. During the "stuttering/freezing period" I noticed that any input I give during this time gets read by the computer and applied after the "stutter" is over. For example, I may be typing a word quickly, then look up to notice that halfway through the word the computer froze, yet after a few seconds when it has resumed it goes ahead and writes the rest of the word that i had been typing during the stutter

2. The freezing can occur at any time. Its pretty random.

3. I noticed that whenever the computer is starting to stutter/freeze, the computer makes weird "Zapping" noises. I do not know how to describe the sound further :( so I will upload a video that has the sound in it later if I figure out how to upload it.

4. One day, I came up with this bubble at the right bottom corner that said something about "virtual memory is low...".

5. My computer stutters alot when the computer is booted. It also stutters alot when I open any programs for the first time after the computer is booted, but it doesn't stutter quite as much if it was the 2nd time, 3rd time, or more to open the program.

6. KEY POINT:
My computer got alot better and had less stuttering periods when I updated my CPU. I went to My computer Properties > Hardware tab > Device Manager > Processors > AMD Athlon(tm) 64 Processor 3500+ Properties > Driver > Update Driver. However I still have the stuttering periods.

I believe it is the hardware problem and not software because my computer started to stutter after I installed Windows XP. So the question is... which hardware would the problem be?

I bolded the giveaway, though you may have other issues. A hard drive manipulates information in a number of ways; even though it says you have XYZ amount of free space, a certain portion of that (maybe all of that if your HDD is full enough) is actually in use, for the purpose of temporarily storing information it's not "done" working with.

Go to My Computer, right click your hard drive partitions (C:\, D:\, etc. you may have only one) and select "Properties" at the bottom of the menu.

Now you can see how much space you have left, and it should be sickeningly low. You can fix that a couple ways:
* Click the "Disk Cleanup" button below the pie chart of your space usage, this is wonky and can take a fucking eternity to guage what can be cleaned up, so instead try...
* CacheCleaner, a program which gets rid of miscellaneous files (mostly temporary files that your in'ernet browser archives while surfing the web) and should spruce up a couple other weak points in your system (it won't SAVE your computer, just tidy it up)
* AFTER YOU'VE FREED UP SPACE, defragment your hard drive. Go back to the right-click properties thing, select the "Tools" tab at the top of that window (second from the left), and select "Defragment". Should be self-explanitory, but once you start a defrag DO NOT do anything with the computer. It should take quite a while, so start it before you go to sleep, and on a night where you have school/work the following morning.

Other solutions, try these AFTER all the shit I posted above:
* You may need to update shit within Windows; open up Internet Explorer, find the Windows Update/Microsoft Update tool (it varies widely between the last 2/3 versions of IE, so you gotta find it on your own). It's got programs, utilities, and even driver downloads with the most recent versions of XP.
* Unplug your computer from the wall, open it up and vacuum-clean it.

#4 explains your problem quite well. What you could be suffering from is what happens when something tries to load up a program, or do a CPU intensive task, it needs to read the hard drive and put the data into Virtual Memory (ya' know, your RAM!).

So what happens is that there isn't enough RAM to cache the task, and the task is put on hold until the RAM becomes empty enough to put it all in.


1. So what you can do to alleviate the problem, is go to "Run", then type msconfig

2. From there, click the "Startup" tab. You'll see a list of processes which will startup when the computer starts, and they fill your Virtual Memory. Most of them you don't need running, so uncheck all the ones you know you don't need running.

3. Also click the "Services" tab. From there, check the "Hide all Microsoft Services" and then uncheck the services you know you don't use. These also take up your Virtual Memory.

I assume your computer is a 939 AMD 3800+ (single-core), with DDR 400 RAM. Doing this will help improve boot time as well as alleviate your problem.

Also, another way to fix this is by adding more RAM. However, RAM prices for DDR DIMMS are extremely expensive and inflated, so expect to spend a lot of money if you plan on increasing the amount of RAM you have.

Try this, and see if it helps. This could also be caused by Spyware/Virus so run some tests overnight too.

Good luck man.

Maybe suggest some antivirus suites that are easy on processing power? I use avast, but only because I don't know about a better choice. I've heard about something called NOD32, but I think I remember trying it and having trouble figuring things out (I had to pirate it iirc).

I used Avira Anti-Virus (which is free) and that did the trick for me. However, I don't know if it's good on processing power. Generally Anti-Virus programs aren't too CPU/RAM dependent, and more or less they just rip away at the hard drive. ClamWin is an antivirus that is open source, but I wasn't too impressed by its outdated interface. I would go with Avira, and leave it on all night.

My suggestions :

1. Processor or Videocard overheating (check temperatures)

2. Memory Problem (check available memory)

3. Hard-drive fault (check if there is bad sectors etc, i use 3 hard drives and sometimes when i open files from other drives than my windows is installed there is lag because drive goes to "sleep" when unnused

Either CPU is not doing the stuff enough fast -> task list gets big on memory -> memory gets full -> starts to save on HDD and then computer gets slown down.

Thou already seeing, i don't think you have 2 virus programs at your computer installed? Also as said, it's mostlikely the RAM or HDD playing with you. When HDD's are dying out they sometimes tend to get very slow first (i guess).

I don't think there's nothing wrong in your CPU. BTW when it's starting to stutter w/e, how does it look in Task Manager's process list? There could be a particular pgoram as well causing it, i wonder. Also i guess you have guess you don't have any spywares thou i doubt it's anything like that.

How much RAM do you have ATM? If you have at least 512MB on XP, you should be okay, regularly 1GB is fine on XP.
Also as Hamppu said about heats, you could use CPU ID - HWMonitor to see your computer's temperatures.

That *zapping* sound you said about sounds a bit bad and let's just hope there's no capacitors or anything else blown up on your MB or anywhere else.

But probably his RAM size is okay, but it could be that it's dying? The computer is getting less stuff to think.

For a temporary thing, try making some virtual RAM.

I don't believe it is a hardware fault unless you tinkered around with firmware updates. I assume it's a fresh install of XP since you said the problem occurred after.

First, you need to check your free disk space since an XP install will take up at least 1 gig. If you have low physical RAM (like 512 MB), you'll likely need about at least 2 gig free HDD space for the win XP auto settings to set aside a large enough Pagefile for it to run smoothly (Pagefile is pretty much what Virtual Memory is).

Second, did you update every driver you could? Preferably through windows update because it's actually better at finding the right drivers.

Third, it is possible that, like Hampuu89 said, your processor could be overheating since your previous OS likely didn't take advantage of the 64 bit AMD processor (assuming you installed XP 64 bit).