Frequent "not responding" errors in windows 7 and slowdowns

mrbeanladen

Distinguished
Jan 16, 2012
212
0
18,690
Here are my specs and some info about my build that i posteon on another thread:
http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/323941-10-voltage-normal-2400 (i originally started this thread but then i thought that CPU isn't the only one to blame for this slowdown and decided I should ask in this part of the forums too, i listed my specs there)
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
I get frequent slowdowns in windows7, lots of windows "stop responding" just for a fraction of a second (this is a really weird and REALLY annoying problem, it seems like my pc hates me. Every time this happens, it just ignores the last command, last typed letter, last pressed button, you can imagine how angry i get when i write paragraphs of text only to notice at the end that half of the letters are missing), and sometimes when i look at the taskbar while windows "stop responding" i can see that the icons disappear and reappear in like a second, what could this mean? I scanned my PC 100% with nod32 v5 smart security, spybot search and destroy and malwarebytes anti malware. I also defragged my pc with Defraggler, I always keep it at under 10% fragmentation), and cleaned my PC with CCleaner... I have the latest drivers for everything important, and winsat mem shows my ram is perfectly fine, 2x2gb kingston 9-9-9-27 1600mhz and has a score of about 25000mb/s

I have never even dreamed that an ALMOST perfect processor (i have a 2400 which should be the best processor if you don't overclock too much, the perfect one i guess is the 2500k or 2600k right?) would slow down so much, i remember being happy on XP with a 1ghz processor, then moved on to a single core 2ghz laptop with non DDR ram with a shitty integrated x3100 chip, and now I have a supposedly very good processor and sometimes windows7 feels as slow on this computer as it did on my pitiful laptop, why is this so? Is this normal? No matter how much money you invest in a PC, windows will always run like piss? The good part about this is that games work perfectly fine, I'm probably dont have as much FPS as other people wouldve with my build but I'm fine with what i have now...
 
go to windows update. look for stuff you might need. ....... turn off all auto updating software/including windows + apps/shut down instant messaging and email alerts. run highjack this and cwshredder. the anti virus can be detecting something for a second. shut it down, see what happens.
 
Because I hate consulting other threads with a passion...

GPU: Asus gts450 at 985mhz (from 850)
CPU: i5 2400
RAM:2x2gb Kingston 1600mhz 9-9-9-27-T1 in dual channel mode
MB:Gigabyte GA-P67A-D3-B3
HDD: WDEALX10 i think, it's a 7200rpm 1TB
PSU: Gigabyte superb e620 620w
DVD-RW: an average one, i forgot its model number
Case: raidmax hurricane atx-248wb

How much if any is the budget to fix this computer?

What OS is this computer using?

How long has this build been in use?

How many tabs do you keep open in your web browsers at the same time on average (err on the high side).

Hit control alt delete and go to task manager in the processes tab and tell me what the 5 or so programs with the largest amounts of RAM usage are.

None of the computers I have used in the last 10 years have really had this problem (at least not in a major way), so I don't think it is inherent to Windows.

How often do you take spray air and blow everything out of the inside of the PC?
 

mrbeanladen

Distinguished
Jan 16, 2012
212
0
18,690

(sry, HDD is WD10EALX not wdealx10, looked inside the case)
Yes, should've posted the specs in this thread too, sorry, but the "not responding" crap i told you about makes writing stuff a pain. I basically have to backtrack every word to make sure it didn't skip a letter, this bug is completely random.

How much if any is the budget to fix this computer?
Well, that's the problem. I'm broke, only have about 100$ saved up.

What OS is this computer using?
Windows 7 Ultimate 64bit fully updated.

How long has this build been in use?
Just a few months.

How many tabs do you keep open in your web browsers at the same time on average (err on the high side).
Not many, I currently have about 10-15 and thats the average, but the browser "stops responding" all the time, even if i have 2 tabs open or about 100 (had once lol).

Hit control alt delete and go to task manager in the processes tab and tell me what the 5 or so programs with the largest amounts of RAM usage are.
firefox.exe *32 ~425mb
plugin-container.exe *32 ~300mb
ekrn.exe *32 153mb (this is nod32 i think, says in "description" that it's ESET Service)
svchost.exe 106mb
Skype.exe *32 ~100mb
dwm.exe 37mb
explorer.exe 30mb

How often do you take spray air and blow everything out of the inside of the PC?
Well, I did open the case and i didn't notice any dust buildup. But thanks for reminding me, I should go and buy one to clean my pc in a few weeks. I never did because the computer is new, only been a few months since I bought it.
I had to open it because i wanted to reset the CMOS, I hoped this problem would be solved but it wasn't. Also, I should tell you another thing, (i think i said it in the first thread but just to be sure...) at the startup, right during POST, when I turn on the computer Gigabyte's logo shows up on the screen then after it disappeared the computer plays a short BEEP and reboots itself. Fortunately, it only does this once, and after it does it it starts booting again successfully.

Also about this problem: windows in W7 (it happens the most in firefox but i seen it happen in other "window" like programs, but in games it doesn't happen at all)show up as "not responding" for a fraction of a second, it goes away so fast you can barely notice it, it just flashes it for a moment (you know, when a window stops responding it turns a bit white) and usually doesn't register the last command, by that i mean i have to click on a tab 5 times sometimes, because it "forgets" i did it after it stops responding, or when i write something (like now) i have to write really slowly because if i manage to hit a key during that "not responding" time, it doesn't register it. Also I notice i happened in the League of Legends launcher (thats a game that's made of 2 exe, one is the launcher where you start a new game and the other one is the actual 3d game, this thing only happens in the launcher thingy) that has a launcher that looks like an windows explorer window, sometimes when I type something it does this not responding crap and when I look at the taskbar, i see its icon dissapearing for just a moment then reappearing, this happens fast since i only notice it sort of "twitching" for a sec.

@swifty_morgan Thanks for the suggestion, I downloaded highjackthis and cwshredder and I'll run some scans on them, I'll check for failed windows updates and I'll try another nvidia driver (I'm using the beta one i think, I should download the stable version)
Edit: CWShredder found nothing, and here's the hijackthis log:http://www.mediafire.com/?2nai9s6ul4s2l16
 
I would like you to download Chrome and try to use that instead of Firefox.

Firefox has a history of memory leaks where it uses a piece of memory and forgets that it used it so it can't clear it and give that memory back to Windows.

Also, I would like you to try a different Anti Virus as well. Avira has a long history of good results and it is pretty unintrusive. That being said, it is nagware (it asks you every so often to buy it). You might also try Microsoft Security Essentials instead if you don't want to be nagged by Avira. I don't know how well it performs, though, but I don't think it nags you.
 

mrbeanladen

Distinguished
Jan 16, 2012
212
0
18,690
I figured out how the DVID works and lowered the voltage by 0.100 volts and lowered to 1.200 from the original 1.300. I greatly lowered the idle temps from 45-50 to 25-30 and when running prime95 it gets to around 70 degrees Celsius, while the 3.8/7/6/5 overclock still works perfectly fine and stable. 0.1v is a huge difference when talking about processors right?why did my dumb motherboard set my processor to 1.3v? but, even tho i did this, i still get this "not responding" crap...

edit: thanks a lot Raiddinn for your help, I have to admit i always wondered how the hell a simple browser like firefox can take up 500+mb of ram when i only have a few tabs open... Skyrim i think only uses about 400-600mb and its a fairly new game (and i found that out when i tried to have some fun with my new PC, i used some cheat codes to spawn about 5 thousand cheese rolls in that game to see how their physics are handled, they got fucked up so bad i clipped through the world terrain lol... and still only about 600 ram when i did that) and yeah I should try another antivirus too, I only need a light one too, in the past few years nod32 never detected ANY virus, just some game trainers and some other "innocent" files. Thanks again, and thank you too swifty morgan
 
Well, it isn't that overly uncommon for a single browser tab to take up 75 MBs of RAM especially when it is loading, but most browsers can give a lot of that back pretty quickly.

Firefox has always had memory/RAM problems, though, ever since it was designed. I was one of the early adopters so I am familiar with that. The worst for me back then was anything with a constant feed.

Chrome seems to do better with memory management.

Also, you may want to try defragging your computer inside windows and then scheduling another defrag right afterwards to occur during the next boot process. The page file can't be defragged while Windows is loaded so it has to be done pre-boot. Doing the one inside Windows will help the pre-boot one get done faster and give you some interim results just to get an idea of how things are looking.

PageDefrag from SysInternals will do the pre-boot defrag that I am talking about.
 

mrbeanladen

Distinguished
Jan 16, 2012
212
0
18,690

Thanks, I'll download pagedefrag and run it after i defrag my HDD with Defraggler.

Also is my Ga-P67A-D3-B3 incompatible with 1600mhz ram? i bought 2 sticks of 2gb kingston ram 1600mhz 9-9-9-27 and every time i turn XMP on and set the ram to 1600mhz from 1333, the next morning when i turn on my Pc, my pc turns on the reboots once (i can hear a low click, by low i mean not a high sound like the click of a mouse) then resumes booting successfully, and if i go to BIOS then, i can see that it set my ram to 1300mhz and reset the voltages. Why does it do this?
 
Most likely your computer is trying to tell you that even if the package says 1600 RAM that this is only 1333 RAM.

It is not very easy to trick a computer. The computer doesn't read the label it just tries to use the RAM at the stats you say to and figures it can't do it and then sets everything to what it thinks the right numbers are.

Kingston doesn't often have this sort of problem, but no RAM maker is completely immune.

Some brands are much more immune than others (Kingston has among the lowest RMA rates while Corsair and OCZ have among the highest), but some small trauma during the transportation to the retail store or when it is shipped from a website to you can mess up even a good maker's RAM stick.

If I were you, I would just accept 1333. Benchmarks have shown the difference between 2133 RAM and 1333 RAM is almost non-existent in the vast majority of situations.

Unless you do a lot of WinZipping for a living, you are fine with 1333. Even if you do WinZip for a living, you can probably wait the 10 extra seconds per gig zipped (Like 1% time increase or something).

 

mrbeanladen

Distinguished
Jan 16, 2012
212
0
18,690
Thank you all, I managed to solve this problem. Like I told you earlier, I lowered my Vcore from 1.3 to 1.2-1.18 while keeping my "overclock" stable. I ran prime95 overnight and the temps only went to 70-75, and the idle temps are 28-35 (dropped a lot from the usual 45-50). I turned off PLL overvoltage, load line calibration, turned on rank and channel interleaving and set the timings manually for my ram and I fixed that rebooting problem, and now everything runs smooth as it should be. I started using Chrome too, it's waaaaaay faster than that crappy Firefox although I still need to get used to its weird look (miss not having a separate search bar and url bar). And yeah, I would've set the ram to 1333mhz but on the box it was written that it's 1600mhz so I was just being stubborn and wanted them to work at that frequency.
 
It was weird when I started using Chrome too, but I kinda like the plain look that doesn't have 500 buttons and bars on it. I have trouble imagining not using it atm.

Glad that you could find some combination of settings to get your computer to work. If it were me I just would have used 1333 and been done with it, but that is cool too as long as everything is stable.

 

mrbeanladen

Distinguished
Jan 16, 2012
212
0
18,690
Oh yeah, I almost forgot about 1 thing. I wanted to run pagedefrag but apparently it doesn't work on 64bit or windows7 (I get an error telling me to run as admin, but when I do "run as administrator" it still doesn't work), so I just removed the pagefile, rebooted and reactivated so that the pagefile.sys file is created again (i defragged the driver where I set my page file anyways, just in case).
I also used this site: http://www.hijackthis.de/index.php?langselect=english#anl to see if my hijackthis log is free of any dangerous stuff and everything was OK. Thank you all, my pc is fast again and every problem is gone.
 

mrbeanladen

Distinguished
Jan 16, 2012
212
0
18,690

REALLY? You're serious? Well not that I'd actually care about the warranty since in my 3rd world country I doubt they give a crap about it, but is it really dangerous to run a ram at 1600 when you have an i5 processor?
 
I guess it would probably work to disable the page file, restart, defrag the PC, and then re-enable the page file. Sounds like a decent work around.

I didn't know Page Defrag had trouble with 64 bit windows, though, thanks for the info.
 



We don't know for sure if it's dangerous, but we're trying to find out. There's a thread in this section dealing with it.
 

mrbeanladen

Distinguished
Jan 16, 2012
212
0
18,690

Damn, ok thanks. I disabled XMP anyways. I always preferred stability instead of extreme oveclocking thats why i chose 2400 instead of 2500k (well, that and, i didn't have enough money lol). And, yeah I heard that rumor on the internet that ram at 1.65v or over 1600mhz can hurt the i5 processors but I thought it wasn't true. Either way, just to be sure, I disabled that XMP thing and went back to 1333mhz. Apparently, my P67A-D3-B3 MB doesn't tolerate voltages set too high.

Also, can i ask you guys something? So I don't make another thread for this simple question. Is an overclocked 2500K at about 4.6ghz a lot better than a normal 3.1ghz 2400? Or like my 2400 that i overclocked to 3.8 one core - - - 3.5 4 cores. Does overclocking its frequency really make a difference, like almost 50% from 3.1 to 4.6? Or is it like in GPUs, where even if you get 1GHZ+ you'll only get a few more FPS? I'm having a bit of buyer's remorse here, I saved up lots of money to buy my current PC (~800-1000 dollars wouldn't seem so much to you guys but here in my country it's about 4-5x minimum wage).
 
$800 seems a lot to me, that's why your computer is better than mine is.

That being said, CPUs scale better than video cards.

It may not be 50% better from 3.1 to 4.6, but it will probably be 30 or 40%.
 
That is kinda cool, but it is by definition a bad deal. They wouldn't offer it for that price if they thought they would lose money because of it. On the macro scale insurance tends to be profitable for the provider.

Still, it isn't the worst idea in the world if you intend to very aggressively OC.
 

mrbeanladen

Distinguished
Jan 16, 2012
212
0
18,690

Ah, ok thanks. Really lifted a big weight from my chest, since the 2500K was almost 150% 2400's price in my country, and that's on top of the importing price that is pretty damn high in my country, and the ~30% VAT. Also, what do you guys suggest I should buy next, when I get the money? A new HDD/SSD(or just a tiny ~60gb SSD where I should install windows and some programs and install all my other games/movies/photos/crap in the 1tb HDD?) or a stronger GPU like maybe the 560 or even 580?
 
If you are going to get a SSD you might as well install games on it. That way the games benefit from the reduced loading times. If anything, I think I would rather install Windows on the 1 TB hard drive and games on the SSD instead of the other way around.

In any event, if I were you I would try to get all the programs on the SSD and all the data on the hard drive.

Windows 7 is only like 20 gigs, so if you had a 128 GB SSD then you could fit 100 gigs worth of games at once on it which is still at least 5 or so in the worst case.

-

A video card would be a nice step up from where you are at as well. A 6850 video card is twice the FPS of the GTS 450 for $150.

That being said, I wouldn't go crazy with this. I don't trust your PSU to be able to handle heavy loads. It isn't high quality like Seasonic models with the same wattage so whether or not it can sufficiently power heavy loads is anyone's guess.

-

You would notice more gaming performance increase from getting a 6850 as the next step up, but you would notice better general performance outside of games from the SSD.

All I really do on my desktop is gaming (writing this atm on laptop instead) so I would take the 6850 over the SSD for the same approx cost.
 

mrbeanladen

Distinguished
Jan 16, 2012
212
0
18,690

Ok, thanks a lot. But is ATI really better than Nvidia? I always had the thought that intel>AMD and Nvidia>ATi, but that may be wrong since I always only bought those 2 brands(well except for one of my first computers that had a voodoo card), never ATi so I have no experience whatsoever with ati. So basically what should be the best to get in a few months, gtx560ti/non ti or ati 6850?

Oh and just one more question, does buying a soundcard and a headphone amplifier really make a difference? Or is that realtek chip that comes with the motherboard good enough?

lol and i forgot to tell you it's GIGABYTE 620watt psu not raidmax,sorry. I always confuse those 2, since my case is raidmax but I forgot I bought a psu myself since I didn't want to use the cheap psu that came with the case (it didn't come with any psu but wouldn't have used it even if it did). But it really isn't good? on the packaging it said it has Japanese capacitors and 80+ something, not that I would know what and why those things would matter.
 
Right now AMD/ATI has the most powerful video card on the market by far with the HD 7970.

That being said, generally their value proposition is less about the most powerful cards, but more about a bigger bang for your buck.

I have been gaming on ATI cards for a long time and never had any problems.

The 560 is about equal to the 6850 for 1/3 more. You can get whichever one you like. If you prefer Intel that is fine.

I wouldn't buy any stock in companies that make soundcards if it were me. I just don't think they are useful enough.

The Gigabyte PSU is better than one made by Raidmax, that is true, but still not on the level of Seasonic and I am still not sure how much I trust it. FSP is the best manufacturer they use and it is one of those ones that will make any design they are sent regardless if it is a quality design or not.