ARGHH ... frustration -- anyone anyideas??

[Carol Haynes]

I have a problem with my system.

As I type about every 10 characters the system pauses. I can carry on typing and it catches up but it is really frustrating.

Anyone any idea how to track down what is causing this?

It seems to be particularly bad in Firefox.

[justice]

If it's software that's runinng in the background:
download and run http://www.microsoft.com/technet/sysinternals/utilities/Autoruns.mspx and check out any program that doesn't have its publisher listed, possibly uncheck it (could be spyware).
after that see http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000888.html

If its hardware, do you have a desktop search running? perhaps it's something to do with your hard drive controller, see if udma is enabled in the device manager.

Usually it's either one or the other.

[Carol Haynes]

I think it is just Firefox playing up - probably a rogue extension.

I have just created a new Mozilla Profile (Start > Run > Firefox.exe -profilemanager) and it seems to have cured the issue. Now all I need to do is try restoring my previous extensions one by one and see if I can avoid it happening again.

[f0dder]

Perhaps firebug or the spellchecker or a combo of the two - I have similar symptoms sometimes. Also, sometimes it helps shutting down firefox completely and re-starting it.

[Carol Haynes]

It has been going on for days now even after night time complete shut downs.

I had a backup profile which I have restored (about a month old or so - FEBE is really useful for this) and the problem seems to be resolved for the moment, though there are a couple of plugins that I have yet to reinstall.