Extreme system slowdown

[Benevolent Deity]

Hello,

I'm using Win10 Pro 64-bit with all updates and an i7 CPU on an Asus motherboard with 12GB RAM. I have a 512GB Samsung system SSD and an TB secondary SSD, each with plenty of room. Normally the system works perfectly. However, when I simultaneously run three specific applications that interact with each other (and that I have to periodically run), the system eventually slows to a crawl and stays that way even after I close these applications. I haven't been able to localize the problem to any particular one of them.

After this slowdown happens it can take up to an hour for the system to shutdown or restart, but when it comes back up everything is fine again. I often just hit the reset button out of disgust. I've carefully examined the task manager statistics when this happens (it takes about 20min for it to open) and everything looks just like it does when the machine is running at full speed. The CPU usage is less than 10%, memory usage is about 30%, the disk usage is negligible, and the network looks normal. I've also tried a couple of 3rd party Task Manger substitutes but they don't indicate anything unusual either. I've done a clean OS install then tried it, but the problem still occurs.

So, my question is simply how to troubleshoot something like this. What could be causing the system to practically grind to a halt yet the Task Manager or equivalent says everything is normal? Do any of you know of an analysis tool that can actually detect what is hogging the system, or maybe some other way to chase down this issue?

Thanks,
Ray

 

[smorizio]

start with mb make sure all bios updates have been done to rule out a bios and cpu bug as there is a fix that came out for intel cpu code bug that vendors have had to patch. make sure the intel mei and chipset drivers are updated. try making sure your using 64 bit aps. if your using 32 bit aps they may be hitting the same memory range. another issue is the odd ram size your using. with newer intel cpu there looking for 8 or 16 or 32g of ram. in match ram sticks. if your running with three ram sticks or two ram sticks that are not the same size remove one and see if the error still there.