Computer Stuttering - Vista

[NYHoustonman]

I recently reformatted my brother's computer and installed a fresh copy of Vista. I'm not sure exactly when this issue started, but whenever I play video or a game or anything of that sort, the computer stutters for a split second every minute or two. It makes the familiar infinite loop sound, where it repeats the same bit of sound, for maybe 3/4 a second, and then goes on its merry way (hasn't locked entirely yet). I tried reverting to the NVidia 158.24 drivers, no change... I also tried taking out the old Santa Cruz sound card he had in favor of onboard audio (AC97), and again there has been no change. The hard drive is running in DMA mode (this was suggested elsewhere).

Are there any known issues I should be aware of? Could this be an issue with overclocking (even though the system is absolutely stable, prime95 included, otherwise)?

Rig is in sig (Lil Bro's computer).

 

[RadiclDreamer]

Are you getting lots of hdd activity during this time? Have you disabled any AV you may be running? Is there enough RAM to prevent swapping

 

[cprince]

What's your system's specs?

 

[NYHoustonman]

I haven't even installed AV yet :x. And he has only 1GB, but while playing video there's maybe 30% usage - it's not that the system has to go to the page file.

The stutters are so short that I really can't tell if the HDD is increasing in usage, but offhand I don't think so.

EDIT - just confirmed it, no HD activity...

Originally posted by: cprince
What's your system's specs?

Sig - Riggage (it's called Lil Bro's Computer)

 

[RadiclDreamer]

Have you installed the chipset drivers for your board? Updated them?

 

[NYHoustonman]

That's actually one of the issues I ran into, NVidia is yet to release NForce3 250 drivers for Vista, so I'm using the drivers that Windows supplied. :\

 

[RadiclDreamer]

Does this same issue exist on XP or have you tried?

 

[NYHoustonman]

I would like to assume my brother would have told me if he had this issue under XP - I go to college in California and am back East for the summer, and we had this reformat planned for a while now, so I just went and did it. I'll ask him when I can reach him.

 

[RadiclDreamer]

Let us know, that way we can rule out physical hardware problems and bios issues

 

[NYHoustonman]

From what I've been reading on various message boards, this appears to be an issue with the NForce drivers - I tried installed the XP drivers, and nothing changed.

Just confirmed also that this is a Vista - only thing... or at least it started after my format.

 

[Noema]

Originally posted by: NYHoustonman
NVidia is yet to release NForce3 250 drivers for Vista, so I'm using the drivers that Windows supplied. :\

That's your problem right there. Check the OS forums and the motherboard forums and you'll find many users with similar issues. Check out these threads:

http://forums.anandtech.com/me...keyword1=nforce3+vista

http://forums.anandtech.com/me...keyword1=nforce3+vista

http://forums.anandtech.com/me...keyword1=nforce3+vista

http://forums.anandtech.com/me...keyword1=nforce3+vista

I'm afraid you are out of luck until nVidia decides to write nForce3 Vista drivers

 

[jjzelinski]

Turn off superfetch service.