Vista Stuttering

[88MVP]

Hi all, this problem just began in the past day or so. Everything I do in Vista right now has a slight stutter or hitch to it every few seconds. For example, if I play a video file, both the audio and video stutter every 5 seconds or so. Moving the mouse around screen also seems to to experience this same hitch.

The task manager shows consistent CPU usage jumping around between 11-20% even when everything should be idle and no single process shows up as using the CPU. Virus scans have come up negative and now I'm stumped.

I'm running Vista x86, Q6600 in a Gigabyte mobo, 3GB of RAM.

Thanks for any insight

 

[Intexity]

would recommend upgrading to windows 7.... sounds like some kind of program is mucking up the works, look to see what is causing the jumps...

 

[88MVP]

If it gets to the point where I have to reinstall an OS, I'll be sticking with Vista. That said, if anyone has anything to suggest short of wiping the OS, I'm all ears...

 

[Gunbuster]

You could have spyware/malware. Try a scan with malwarebytes or MS security essentials.

I have also seen a dying hard drive do similar things. try http://www.hdtune.com/

 

[amdskip]

If it gets to the point where I have to reinstall an OS, I'll be sticking with Vista. That said, if anyone has anything to suggest short of wiping the OS, I'm all ears...

Sorry man, Vista is very rough around the edges and Windows 7 really does fix these issues. I'd highly recommend looking into changing to Windows 7.

 

[Blazer]

upgrade to win 7 isnt the answer, and imo vista is plenty stable.

hardware test need to be run first, goto the HD manufactures site and download and run the extended harddrive test.

also could be a driver problem, update the drivers.

 

[gravator]

You could have spyware/malware. Try a scan with malwarebytes or MS security essentials.

I have also seen a dying hard drive do similar things. try http://www.hdtune.com/

Try these in safe mode and also might look at spinrite software for maintenance on the HD. A lot of times I have ran into this is a spyware/adaware issues.