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Something on computer is fubar

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nite_monkey:
I'm not sure what the problem is, but either some hardware on my computer is about to go out, or something.
For some reason, my computer randomly starts to freeze for about half a second, and it does this every 2 or 3 seconds. Also, the task manager and the cpumeter gadget built into windows 7 both say that the cpu is at 30-76% even though the system idle process is at 92-97%.
This makes watching videos, and playing games very difficult.
When I started this post, all of the above was happening, but right now, the system has stopped freezing every couple of seconds, but it still says the cpu is at 30-76% and the idle process it at around 90-92%.
I am pretty sure I can rule out the hard drive, because I just replaced it about a week before Christmas. So if anyone could help me out here, that would be awesome.
If you need anymore information, just let me know, and I will see what I can do.

edit:after further inspection, I ran across the resource monitor tool, and found out "System Interrupts" is what is taking up around 30% of the cpu

f0dder:
I am pretty sure I can rule out the hard drive, because I just replaced it about a week before Christmas. So if anyone could help me out here, that would be awesome.
If you need anymore information, just let me know, and I will see what I can do.

edit:after further inspection, I ran across the resource monitor tool, and found out "System Interrupts" is what is taking up around 30% of the cpu
-nite_monkey (December 31, 2009, 04:12 AM)
--- End quote ---
Ruling out the harddrive is exactly what I wouldn't do - your symptoms sounds pretty much like a damaged drive (or cable) resulting in access mode dropping from DMA to PIO... trying to read/rewrite bad sectors would explain the freezes, and running in PIO would explain high System Interrupts CPU consumption.

It's not the only possible solution, but a likely one. Go to device manager, check properties for your IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers, and see if any of them have dropped to PIO mode. Google dma+revert+pio for more information.

cmpm:
I had to update the IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers after upgrading to w7.
I didn't have those symptoms but I was checking all my drivers anyway.
Right click the IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers and click upgrade,
let it search ms.
And ms/w7's choice of video adapter driver was poor.
Went to the manufacturer's site to upgrade it.

nite_monkey:
I've never heard of dma mode or pio mode, so I don't know for sure if my hard drive is running in dma or pio, but I did run across something that I thought looked like something useful.
Something on computer is fubar
That is the closest thing I got to any dma/pio settings
Something on computer is fubar
those are the only devices under the ide ata controllers, and I attempted to update all of them through the windows update, but they were all up to date.

bob99:

I had the same occur to me on my laptop a while back.  Others members were helpful in my old post here:

https://www.donationcoder.com/forum/index.php?PHPSESSID=na237aln3k3pmcd0nh0a0r0ug0&topic=13175.0

It was a hard drive getting ready to fail.  Replaced it and all has been well since.

Good luck.

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