Why is my computer hiccuping every 60 seconds?

[superboyac]

Recently, my computer has started "hiccuping" every 60 seconds (at the :45 of the minutes:second on the clock).  How can I find out the problem?  At first I thought my cpu was being overloaded by my mp3 player (foobar) because sometimes it reaches 20-30% cpu, but it's not that.  And when the time comes, everything stops on the computer for a split second, not just the audio.  Like, I'm typing right now, and it will just stop on one of the letters for a split second and then a bunch of the letters that I just typed during the pause will avalanche across.
There must be a service or something that's checking something every 60 seconds, but I can't figure out what it is.

[mouser]

i had this kind of thing before and it's infuriating.

first step would be exiting all normal programs and see if that eliminates it.

if you don't have luck finding it i would uninstall completely my antivirus, and then firewall
and see if that solves it.

[PPLandry]

Does even your mouse refuse to move during that short time? I had this for months. Sporadically, for a couple hours a day, every 10 sec, the HD would be active for a short time and the mouse would lock.

Trying to move, point, click was very difficult. I never really found a fix, it simply went away (I think, I did fiddle with numerous settings, but I don't recall it having an effect)

If it just started, you can try to go back to a previous system restore point. I seem to recall that this sometimes fixed it (for a while anyway)

Good luck...

[cmpm]

You could check your event logs in 'administrative tools' in 'control panel'.

See if anything is getting recorded every minute.

[superboyac]

It was Spysweeper.

I installed it from the free thing I read here on DC a couple of weeks ago, and that's when it started.  I remembered that it was the most recent software I installed, and I noticed a spysweeper exe file running in my task manager even when spysweeper was shut down.  I tried deactivating all the "shield" options, but it didn't help.  So, I uninstalled it and everything is fine now.

Why does spysweeper need to have a service running constantly and what is it checking for every 60 seconds?  Nonsense.  It should just run when i need to clean my pc.  Oh well, good riddance.  I've read it's a great program, however.

[mouser]

you may be able to configure spysweeper not to to resident scanning and not use the service.

[superboyac]

Maybe I'll try that later.  i didn't use it that much, and it didn't find many things on my computer anyway.

[nosh]

Why does spysweeper need to have a service running constantly and what is it checking for every 60 seconds?  Nonsense.  It should just run when i need to clean my pc.  Oh well, good riddance.  I've read it's a great program, however.

-superboyac (February 15, 2008, 11:08 PM)

It's the same story with MS's Windows Defender, I just disable the sevice and start it manually on the rare occasion that I do scan. Spyware Doctor has a free edition available, BTW (bundled with GooGlePack which can be safely uninstalled, IIRC). They've unbundled most of the realtime crap from the freebie, PERFECT!

Edit: G

[J-Mac]

And here I was going to recommend that you have your PC drink a glass of water upside down, and then scare it suddenly.   

Actually I had similar issues with SpySweeper over a year ago. I tried Version 4.5 on my main PC and it was nice; worked very well and no overly heavy hits.  I purchased three licenses - one for each of my main PC, my wife's PC, and my notebook.  Then they released V.5 and sent it out as a free update, and Wham!  It started using 50% CPU on all PCs and would not let it go.

Webroot support would not even acknowledge the problem, just saying it must be a "bad install" and to uninstall/reinstall.  CastleCops was filled with users moaning about it for quite a while. Eventually I just wrote them a letter saying what I thought and uninstalled from all PCs. I won't touch it again.

More recently I had an issue more like yours.  If I didn't use the keyboard or mouse for a couple of minutes, when I tried again the mouse would move but all else was frozen solid. Tabs on the taskbar could not be clicked, tabs in Firefox couldn't be clicked. I could not close any programs, nor access the task manager 0or Process Explorer.  I could not find any indication of what was doing it. Nothing in Event Viewer, and if I left Process Explorer open and showing on my second monitor it showed nothing out of the ordinary.  I had to go back to when I believed it had started - about two weeks - and determine exactly what software I had installed, removed, or updated. One I suspected was Clipboard Help+Spell. I had installed that at the right time and it was always running in my systray when Explorer was freezing - at least I surmise that it was Explorer based on the symptoms.  I made the list of installed apps since that date and disabled them one by one. Turned out to be a program called FastCheck, which is a notifier for Fastmail's webmail service. I could enable it and see the freeze soon afterward, and then disable it and see everything free up. I subsequently found several users post about it on their forum. The developer admitted it but his response is to have users make several configuration changes in Windows to alleviate it. I figure that's HIS job, so it's gone!

Jim