Occasional random stuttering in Win8

IceColdas

New Member
Messages
9
Location
Netherlands
Hello everyone, Ice here. I'm new to the forums, but I've had an issue with Win8 for a while now. Hopefully someone can help me out, because it's slowly driving me nuts.

Occasionally, my computer just stutters (freezes for about half a second) several times in a row, ranging from about 6 to 10 times in a row. Literally everything will stop and freeze during that moment; the screen, sound, mouse, my friends even report that my mic input stutters. This happens about once every hour, usually a bit less than that.

It doesn't matter what I'm doing with the computer when this happens; Playing games, watching a video on YT or just on the desktop, doing nothing.

I've had this issue before, when I just installed Win8, but somehow that had fixed itself for a while. Now, a few weeks back, the issue has come up again and I haven't been able to find out why it happens.

I've done a few recent changes a few weeks back too. I replaced my NVidia GeForce 470 with the NVidia Geforce 660 Ti. I had also connected my sis' laptop's HDD around there as well, when her laptop broke down.

I've tried to do a number of things and looked up on forums for a solution. I've done a SFC scan and I've updated my NVidia drivers multiple times.

My specs:

OS: Win8 Enterprise 64 bit
VCard: NVidia GeForce GTX 660 Ti
RAM: 2x 4GB DDR3
CPU: Intel i5 760 @ 2.80GHz
HDD: Samsung HD 103SJ ATA
Motherboard: P55-GD65 (MS-7583) by Micro-Star International

Any suggestions are greatly appreciated. If you need specific information I might have forgotten, I'll try to post those as soon as possible.
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 8 Enterprise 64 bit
    Computer type
    PC/Desktop
    CPU
    Intel i7 3820 @ 3.6GHz
    Motherboard
    MSI X79A-GD45 (8D) iX79
    Memory
    2x 4GB DDR3
    Graphics Card(s)
    NVidia GeForce GTX 660 Ti
    Monitor(s) Displays
    SyncMaster P2270
    Screen Resolution
    1920x1080
    Hard Drives
    Samsung HD 103SJ ATA
    PSU
    530W
    Keyboard
    Logitech
    Mouse
    Logitech G500
    Internet Speed
    Cable
    Browser
    Chrome
Was her laptop problem virus related?

Could you have that virus now?

What antivirus program do you use and have you scanned your system since?

When your computer frreezes is the harddrive accessing like mad? Can you hear it or have an led flashing?
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 8 & Windows 7 Dual Boot
    Computer type
    Laptop
    System Manufacturer/Model
    HP G60
    CPU
    AMD Turion RM-70 Dual Core 2.0 GHZ
    Memory
    3 GB
    Graphics Card(s)
    Nvidia GeForce 8200M G
    Screen Resolution
    1366 x 768
    Mouse
    MS Intellipoint 5 button (love it!)
    Browser
    Chrome and Chromium
    Antivirus
    Avast Free & Malwarebytes
It sounds like what happens to me when a script is being sent to IE10 and it's too much, it locks up the system for a bit until the system can respond and pull up the "Disable Script?" popup.
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 8 Pro with Media Center/Windows 7
    Computer type
    PC/Desktop
    System Manufacturer/Model
    Asus M2N-MX SE Plus § DualCore AMD Athlon 64 X2, 2300 MHz (11.5 x 200) 4400+ § Corsair Value Select
    CPU
    AMD 4400+/4200+
    Motherboard
    Asus M2N-MX SE Plus/Asus A8M2N-LA (NodusM)
    Memory
    2 GB/3GB
    Graphics Card(s)
    GeForce 8400 GS/GeForce 210
    Sound Card
    nVIDIA GT218 - High Definition Audio Controller
    Monitor(s) Displays
    Hitachi 40" LCD HDTV
    Screen Resolution
    "1842 x 1036"
    Hard Drives
    WDC WD50 00AAKS-007AA SCSI Disk Device
    ST1000DL 002-9TT153 SCSI Disk Device
    WDC WD3200AAJB-00J3A0 ATA Device
    WDC WD32 WD-WCAPZ2942630 USB Device
    WD My Book 1140 USB Device
    PSU
    Works 550w
    Case
    MSI "M-Box"
    Cooling
    Water Cooled
    Keyboard
    Dell Keyboard
    Mouse
    Microsoft Intellimouse
    Internet Speed
    Cable Medium Speed
    Browser
    Chrome/IE 10
    Antivirus
    Eset NOD32 6.x/Win Defend
    Other Info
    Recently lost my Windows 8 on my main PC, had to go back to Windows 7.
@Brooklyn, the cause was actually a silly accident; She spilled tea all over the keyboard, and killed her laptop (Macbook). A virus is unlikely, especially since this freezing issue was happening right after I first installed Windows 8 as well. My own harddrive seems to be fine, no weird sounds either.

@XweAponX The CPU doesn't appear to spike up much or at all whenever it happens. I couldn't find a spike in the graph of the task manager whenever this issue popped up.
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 8 Enterprise 64 bit
    Computer type
    PC/Desktop
    CPU
    Intel i7 3820 @ 3.6GHz
    Motherboard
    MSI X79A-GD45 (8D) iX79
    Memory
    2x 4GB DDR3
    Graphics Card(s)
    NVidia GeForce GTX 660 Ti
    Monitor(s) Displays
    SyncMaster P2270
    Screen Resolution
    1920x1080
    Hard Drives
    Samsung HD 103SJ ATA
    PSU
    530W
    Keyboard
    Logitech
    Mouse
    Logitech G500
    Internet Speed
    Cable
    Browser
    Chrome
You got Windows 8 on a Macbook? I installed 7 on a Macbook Pro, I updated from XP, I had to use Vista as a 2nd Step. I wonder if I would have to do that to get Windows 8 in there?
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 8 Pro with Media Center/Windows 7
    Computer type
    PC/Desktop
    System Manufacturer/Model
    Asus M2N-MX SE Plus § DualCore AMD Athlon 64 X2, 2300 MHz (11.5 x 200) 4400+ § Corsair Value Select
    CPU
    AMD 4400+/4200+
    Motherboard
    Asus M2N-MX SE Plus/Asus A8M2N-LA (NodusM)
    Memory
    2 GB/3GB
    Graphics Card(s)
    GeForce 8400 GS/GeForce 210
    Sound Card
    nVIDIA GT218 - High Definition Audio Controller
    Monitor(s) Displays
    Hitachi 40" LCD HDTV
    Screen Resolution
    "1842 x 1036"
    Hard Drives
    WDC WD50 00AAKS-007AA SCSI Disk Device
    ST1000DL 002-9TT153 SCSI Disk Device
    WDC WD3200AAJB-00J3A0 ATA Device
    WDC WD32 WD-WCAPZ2942630 USB Device
    WD My Book 1140 USB Device
    PSU
    Works 550w
    Case
    MSI "M-Box"
    Cooling
    Water Cooled
    Keyboard
    Dell Keyboard
    Mouse
    Microsoft Intellimouse
    Internet Speed
    Cable Medium Speed
    Browser
    Chrome/IE 10
    Antivirus
    Eset NOD32 6.x/Win Defend
    Other Info
    Recently lost my Windows 8 on my main PC, had to go back to Windows 7.
You got Windows 8 on a Macbook? I installed 7 on a Macbook Pro, I updated from XP, I had to use Vista as a 2nd Step. I wonder if I would have to do that to get Windows 8 in there?

I don't have a macbook myself, and know very little about it. I can't help you, sorry. I'm using a (gaming) desktop.
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 8 Enterprise 64 bit
    Computer type
    PC/Desktop
    CPU
    Intel i7 3820 @ 3.6GHz
    Motherboard
    MSI X79A-GD45 (8D) iX79
    Memory
    2x 4GB DDR3
    Graphics Card(s)
    NVidia GeForce GTX 660 Ti
    Monitor(s) Displays
    SyncMaster P2270
    Screen Resolution
    1920x1080
    Hard Drives
    Samsung HD 103SJ ATA
    PSU
    530W
    Keyboard
    Logitech
    Mouse
    Logitech G500
    Internet Speed
    Cable
    Browser
    Chrome
You seem to know what youre doing, download this small program called speccy by piriform.

It shows every detail about your system including gpu cpu hdd MB temps, very clean interface easy to read.
also shows driver versions and dates

Im sure you will be able to spot the problem if its in there..

Other than the glitches, is the computer running fast? is it running at full speed? The task manager under performance will show you realtime processor usage. If its at or near 100% most of the time then you should find your problem from there..

Speccy will also show you realtime bus and processor speeds and graphs..

Sorry i cant be of more help but it seems like one of those things you have to catch in the act..
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 8 & Windows 7 Dual Boot
    Computer type
    Laptop
    System Manufacturer/Model
    HP G60
    CPU
    AMD Turion RM-70 Dual Core 2.0 GHZ
    Memory
    3 GB
    Graphics Card(s)
    Nvidia GeForce 8200M G
    Screen Resolution
    1366 x 768
    Mouse
    MS Intellipoint 5 button (love it!)
    Browser
    Chrome and Chromium
    Antivirus
    Avast Free & Malwarebytes
Thanks, I'll give Speccy a shot then. Been using CPU-Z before, but Speccy is definitely a lot more advanced. I'll try to see if I can find any abnormal spikes whenever it happens again.

CPU usage seems to be normal, about 10 to 15% with Chrome in the background. I couldn't spot any CPU spikes while the freezing was happening either in the task manager.

EDIT:
I wanted to add some more information I think I missed. The main reason I upgraded from Win7 to Win8 was because I kept getting BSODs. Win8 just got in, figured I'd install that, perhaps the issue would be software related. BSOD still happened, and I found out through the error message popping up, that my RAM was broken, so I replaced the 2x 2GB for the 2x 4GB I have now. I had this same freezing issue in Win8 back then for a while, which somehow disappeared for a few months.

I couldn't spot anything weird about the RAM in Speccy though.
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 8 Enterprise 64 bit
    Computer type
    PC/Desktop
    CPU
    Intel i7 3820 @ 3.6GHz
    Motherboard
    MSI X79A-GD45 (8D) iX79
    Memory
    2x 4GB DDR3
    Graphics Card(s)
    NVidia GeForce GTX 660 Ti
    Monitor(s) Displays
    SyncMaster P2270
    Screen Resolution
    1920x1080
    Hard Drives
    Samsung HD 103SJ ATA
    PSU
    530W
    Keyboard
    Logitech
    Mouse
    Logitech G500
    Internet Speed
    Cable
    Browser
    Chrome
Hi there
99.9999% of Computer poor performance is usually POOR DISKS--especially if they are slow 5400 RPM IDE disks with little or no internal cache.

Bad Disk I/O will kill any system even one with an i7 processor in it and 32 GB RAM. Try and check what the HDD's are doing -- and if you have the money put OS and applications on a separate SSD --infinitely faster in every way to old spinners for the OS.

This technique is often used by Hackers in Dos (Denial of service attacks) -- they often can't physically get into the system or infect it but by overloading the I/O like crazy the whole system will come crashing to its knees.

Cheers
jimbo
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Linux Centos 7, W8.1, W7, W2K3 Server W10
    Computer type
    PC/Desktop
    Monitor(s) Displays
    1 X LG 40 inch TV
    Hard Drives
    SSD's * 3 (Samsung 840 series) 250 GB
    2 X 3 TB sata
    5 X 1 TB sata
    Internet Speed
    0.12 GB/s (120Mb/s)
Thanks Jimbo for your suggestion. I haven't noticed any bad preformance while installing or loading data, which makes me question if the harddrive has an issue.
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 8 Enterprise 64 bit
    Computer type
    PC/Desktop
    CPU
    Intel i7 3820 @ 3.6GHz
    Motherboard
    MSI X79A-GD45 (8D) iX79
    Memory
    2x 4GB DDR3
    Graphics Card(s)
    NVidia GeForce GTX 660 Ti
    Monitor(s) Displays
    SyncMaster P2270
    Screen Resolution
    1920x1080
    Hard Drives
    Samsung HD 103SJ ATA
    PSU
    530W
    Keyboard
    Logitech
    Mouse
    Logitech G500
    Internet Speed
    Cable
    Browser
    Chrome
Me smell an anti-virus or other security suite (which even more likely then) problem here.

Which you make pc happy with currently?

Me make a pro-tip: If you want to see if antivirus or security suite make-a problem, then do not disable but make-a full uninstall instead.

Other than that, how is your DPC latency?

DPC Latency Checker
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Viewing through Windows 7, me like-a-discuss 8 though
    Computer type
    PC/Desktop
    System Manufacturer/Model
    Make-A-Meself
    CPU
    Electrons flow to, through and out of it
    Motherboard
    It has a wire, very small, many many
    Memory
    It remember
    Graphics Card(s)
    It make video
    Browser
    Firefox show me good view
    Antivirus
    Kaspersky make-a-the-bad-go-away
My current antivirus is McAfee VirusScan Enterprise, version 8.7.0i. It has been my Virusscanner on Win7 as well, without any issues. (I reformatted my HDD completely before installing Win8, so it was a clean reinstall back then).

Im currently running a SFC scan again, I'll run the program again when it's done, and I'll be sure to check it when the issue occurs.
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 8 Enterprise 64 bit
    Computer type
    PC/Desktop
    CPU
    Intel i7 3820 @ 3.6GHz
    Motherboard
    MSI X79A-GD45 (8D) iX79
    Memory
    2x 4GB DDR3
    Graphics Card(s)
    NVidia GeForce GTX 660 Ti
    Monitor(s) Displays
    SyncMaster P2270
    Screen Resolution
    1920x1080
    Hard Drives
    Samsung HD 103SJ ATA
    PSU
    530W
    Keyboard
    Logitech
    Mouse
    Logitech G500
    Internet Speed
    Cable
    Browser
    Chrome
My current antivirus is McAfee VirusScan Enterprise, version 8.7.0i. It has been my Virusscanner on Win7 as well, without any issues. (I reformatted my HDD completely before installing Win8, so it was a clean reinstall back then).

Im currently running a SFC scan again, I'll run the program again when it's done, and I'll be sure to check it when the issue occurs.

Yeah, McAfee is known to cause stutter issues of all types. Maybe it is even updating signatures every hour to coincide with problems?

https://encrypted.google.com/search?q=mcafee+stutter&btnG=Search&output=search&sclient=psy-ab&gbv=1

I can't guarantee you that's the issue, but if that was my machine, it would be gone as quick as lightening to determine either way conclusively.

It's good to make-a run SFC since it can't hurt, but if you had any corrupt files, Windows would not boot or Windows would be throwing errors at you like mad. It's very unlikely to help the issue at all.

But yup, with McAfee gone and the unlikely event there is still an issue, fire up the DPC latency checker to see if any drivers are causing poor real-time performance. Then we can take it from there.
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Viewing through Windows 7, me like-a-discuss 8 though
    Computer type
    PC/Desktop
    System Manufacturer/Model
    Make-A-Meself
    CPU
    Electrons flow to, through and out of it
    Motherboard
    It has a wire, very small, many many
    Memory
    It remember
    Graphics Card(s)
    It make video
    Browser
    Firefox show me good view
    Antivirus
    Kaspersky make-a-the-bad-go-away
I shall try uninstalling McAfee then. In the meantime while I was away, the DPC Latency Checker came up with a maximum of 216.053µs which will -probably- be from when the issue occurred.

The SFC did come up with a message about corrupt files and that it couldn't fix some of them.
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 8 Enterprise 64 bit
    Computer type
    PC/Desktop
    CPU
    Intel i7 3820 @ 3.6GHz
    Motherboard
    MSI X79A-GD45 (8D) iX79
    Memory
    2x 4GB DDR3
    Graphics Card(s)
    NVidia GeForce GTX 660 Ti
    Monitor(s) Displays
    SyncMaster P2270
    Screen Resolution
    1920x1080
    Hard Drives
    Samsung HD 103SJ ATA
    PSU
    530W
    Keyboard
    Logitech
    Mouse
    Logitech G500
    Internet Speed
    Cable
    Browser
    Chrome
I hear ya. What I really meant was "important files" being corrupt or not.

Still, that is practically guaranteed to not be of importance, although a run in safe mode will likely sort that out anyhow. Or just look at CBS log to see which file(s) it's not repairing. Then you can get them, if you really want to.
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Viewing through Windows 7, me like-a-discuss 8 though
    Computer type
    PC/Desktop
    System Manufacturer/Model
    Make-A-Meself
    CPU
    Electrons flow to, through and out of it
    Motherboard
    It has a wire, very small, many many
    Memory
    It remember
    Graphics Card(s)
    It make video
    Browser
    Firefox show me good view
    Antivirus
    Kaspersky make-a-the-bad-go-away
Uninstalled McAfee, the issue happened once more. The result:

DPC Latency during freeze.png
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 8 Enterprise 64 bit
    Computer type
    PC/Desktop
    CPU
    Intel i7 3820 @ 3.6GHz
    Motherboard
    MSI X79A-GD45 (8D) iX79
    Memory
    2x 4GB DDR3
    Graphics Card(s)
    NVidia GeForce GTX 660 Ti
    Monitor(s) Displays
    SyncMaster P2270
    Screen Resolution
    1920x1080
    Hard Drives
    Samsung HD 103SJ ATA
    PSU
    530W
    Keyboard
    Logitech
    Mouse
    Logitech G500
    Internet Speed
    Cable
    Browser
    Chrome
I wanted to make an update on this post. I've done a few things, and made a mistake as well.

Out of frustration, I had tried to update my motherboard, and found the MSi Live Updater, which turned out to be a mistake. It also had a tool to flash the BIOS to a 'newer version'... through Windows. So while flashing, it locked up, you can guess the rest. I tried to restore the BIOS using a USB stick, which seemed to update successfully, yet it never again passed beyond a black screen...

Anyway, I was looking to upgrade my CPU to a newer generation i7, which had now been accellerated. The i5 didn't really do for larger games like Planetside 2. I'm now using the new Motherboard (MSi X79A-GD45 (8D) iX79) and processor (Intel i7 3820), but the stutter issue is still there.

Aside of that, I've also done two more tests.
Using Lifeguard Diagnostic, I've defragmented my HDD and then scanned it with this tool, which passed.
Using Memtest86, I've tested my RAM and came up with 0 errors. I figured it could've been my new RAM; I had installed this together with Win 8 a few months ago.

My next steps are trying to reinstall Windows 8 completely. If that still fails, I shall try to install Windows 7 and see if that solves anything. If anyone else has other suggestions to try, I think I prefer those before clearing my harddrive completely.

 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 8 Enterprise 64 bit
    Computer type
    PC/Desktop
    CPU
    Intel i7 3820 @ 3.6GHz
    Motherboard
    MSI X79A-GD45 (8D) iX79
    Memory
    2x 4GB DDR3
    Graphics Card(s)
    NVidia GeForce GTX 660 Ti
    Monitor(s) Displays
    SyncMaster P2270
    Screen Resolution
    1920x1080
    Hard Drives
    Samsung HD 103SJ ATA
    PSU
    530W
    Keyboard
    Logitech
    Mouse
    Logitech G500
    Internet Speed
    Cable
    Browser
    Chrome
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