Strange random delay, or "lag"?

I'll attempt to describe this... At random, however frequent intervals my computer will have a delay in processing any given command(mouse click, wheel scroll, key stroke). It can almost seem like a lag, you can continue to enter new commands and they will process all at once when the intermittant delay ends. The misterious "lag" also seems to be affecting windows media player and other play back appplications...

While attempting to watch a video it will randomly freeze on a frame and the audio sounds like a skipping CD, then after a few seconds or more it seems to catch up to where it should be(much like a scratched DVD can do). However these are .mpeg files or something stored on the hard drive. This problem happens with all files I try so I'm certain its not a corrupt file.

Finally the strange part, I can play any game that takes over the screen such as: World of Warcraft, Fallout 3, Obsidian games downloaded from msn, etc without a hitch. None of these conditions carry over into those programs. This is what makes me believe it has something to do with my OS. I don't believe it is malware or anything as Kaspersky, and MBAM are clean. So I'm stumped here please advise, and thanks in advance...

Tesla

 

Hello Tesla. Welcome to WindowsBBS.

The first thing I would check are your hard disk/disks just to rule them out.

What make and model of disk do you have?

I will ask Arie the forum owner to post a link to all the different drive testing tools for you.

Thanks Tom

Tom

 

Sorry, I didn't realize my system specs were hidden... Corrected that issue, went to Seagates website and checked for firmware updates, but none were available. Please advise what I should try next. I'll check back for drive test link, and thanks again...
Tesla

 

Sorry about that, thanks for clarifying mate. So I ran the test and both drives passed the DST and the SMART test. What should I do now?

 

Yes, it seems like a HDD problem.

Some suggestions:

Do you have plenty of space on the drive? If Windows gets down to somewhere near 10% free-space you will start having problems.

Do you have enough RAM? If your system does not have enough to run what is required, it will start using Pagefile on the HDD. Does your HDD LED stay on a lot of the time?

Assuming it is an IDE HDD, go to Device Manager -> IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers, right-click on the Primary IDE Channel -> Advanced Settings tab and check that the Current Transfer Mode is Ultra DMA, it should be mode 5 or higher.

Driver problem? Could the chipset drivers have not been installed? If they have, check for updated chipset drivers at the motherboard/system manufacturer's website.

Matt

 

Hi Tesla,

You have tried the obvious, correct? Cleaned the cache, cookies, temp, chkdsk, and defragged?