Computer keeps stuttering!

Alright so I have a HUGE issue with my computer.

My computer started stuttering about 2 months ago and I STILL haven't found a fix for it. I have defragged, run multiple virus scans, cleaned my registry, and everything above.

What happens is for a period of time (from 1 second to 30 seconds) my mouse, video and sound lag horribly. The sound makes a crackling noise some times and it just slows EVERYTHING down other times. The frames also just spike really hard. My mouse is choppy as well.

I have also checked my temperatures and they are all normal.

Now this is the information I've gathered so far about the problem.

It happens when:

- I switch tabs on Google Chrome

- I am on loading screens for any game (Battlefield Bad Company 2 is the worst so far) as well as at random while I'm playing any game.

- Switching between programs

- Opening and closing of any programs

and so on and so forth.

Now some things I have noticed are:

- Even though my temperatures are very cool, I noticed that recently my hard drive is about 3 degrees hotter. No idea if that is relevant or not.

- When my sound lags, it only happens when I have my sound coming through my headset. When my sound is coming through my speakers, it does not lag with my computer. Also, my sound system is plugged in through to my motherboard while my headset is plugged in through my keyboard.

- This started happening around the time I plugged in a second monitor. It happened all the way through the time I had the second monitor plugged in and still continues now after I have unplugged the second monitor.

That's all of the information I can remember to provide for right now.

I hope you all can help and thank you!

 

It sounds most likely to be a bad hard drive and I would recommend getting a new one and clone your original.

It could also be your processor, I would find it more likely if your video is on the motherboard but under this scenario I have came across one computer where this problem was happening and it was only one bad RAM stick.


My sources:
4+ Years professional experience and 10+ years of non-professional experience as a Computer Technician, Server Administrator and Network Engineer.

 

I'd start looking at the HD too. I'd start with a Linux live boot and check the SMART status with the Disk Utility that comes on most Linux distros. Alternatively use the Partition Wizard live boot Cd and check it that way.

 

I'd run the hard drive manufacturer's hard drive diagnostics. If you see errors there, the hard drive is failing and needs to be replaced.

To run the diags, download and burn the Ultimate Boot CD to CD. It has all the hard drive manufacturer's diagnostic utilities, (plus much more). Simply boot your computer from this CD and select the utility you want to run.

If you aren't sure who made the hard drive in your computer, use Seagate's Seatools as it will work with most any make of drive.

The following instructions may prove helpful for burning the UBCD .iso file to disc:
How can I write (burn) ISO files to CD or DVD?

 

Thank you everybody for your replies!

I do have a question for you though, dnmacleod.

How do I use this exactly? I don't want to wipe or clean anything.

 

A linux live boot Cd (whichever one you choose to use) runs your computer independently of your hard disk and is a good way of determining whether a piece of hardware (in this case your hard disk) is indeed faulty or not and that your issues are not simply down to a software problem. Most - if not all - linux distros that I've used come with an application called Disk Utility which will read the SMART data off your disk and will be a good indicator on whether your disk is heading south.

You won't wipe anything by just looking at it. However, Partition wizard has a tool that will analyze your drive sector by sector and flag them as red or green. Obviously, if you have more than a few red sectors, that means that your drive is heading south. It also does have a drive wiping utility as well should you wish to do that but you do have to specifically run that application.

 

hardware issue to me. probably hard drive, video card or RAM.
try isolating these items one after another and see what happens.