Different Kind of Stuttering

I didn't want to hijack the guy below me's thread, so here goes:

Whenever anything uses any processing power whatsoever on my Allendale E6400, everything begins to stutter. The mouse moves jaggedly when I move it across the screen. Any music I'm playing with distort for half a second every 3 seconds. Movies are an even bigger joke. I can't multitask at all, and it's incredibly irritating when I can't even listen to music while opening a complex web page without it stuttering on me. Installing software does it. Anything really. The most annoying part is that my CPU is hardly being utilized. It does this at 12% utilization. It does it at 80%. It doesn't matter.

The problem was exacerbated when I replaced my Santa Cruz sound card with a BlueGears b-Enspirer.

Any suggestions would be appreciated.

 

We need more info: like amount of and type of RAM, CPU type and speed, what OS, etc....
In the meantime, take a look at the Malware Removal forum and read/follow the stickies....

 

Sure thing. That info is actually mostly in my signature, except for the type of memory, which is G.Skill DDR2 800. Everything else you mentioned is right there.

 

DUH! I didn't see the signature Ya know what? Your sig was there a second ago, and I scrolled up to look at it again, and it's gone confused.... anyway, check your startup menu (Click Start > Run and type msconfig) and start unchecking stuff in there (uncheck it all if you want, you can recheck it later if needed), and reboot and see if the problem remains. If the problem is gone, recheck items one-by-one (or leave 'em all unchecked) to find out what the offending program is. I think your resources are being used up by something. You might look into a RAM diagnostic and maybe install the newest drivers available for your PC and it's components (sound, video, etc)... post your results and we'll go from there...

hopperdave2000

 

I'd like to add something, if I may. What threads/processes are not normal priority?

Specifically, above normal priority?

You can check from Task Manager. Ctrl-Alt-Del.

 

After doing some heavy research (sorry to not keep you guys updated-- kinda hard when I'm often working without an OS ^_^), I figured out that the issue was hard drive related. I ran a diagnostics utility (Maxtor's Powermax (did you know Seagate recently bought Maxtor?)) and found that the OS drive was failing. I flattened it, restored the OS on a newer drive, and the glitch seems to have disappeared. Hopefully it stays this way, but I'll keep ya'll posted.

Thanks for your help, although I'm sorry the solution was way left-field of your suggestions. I did try them, though. =)