[SOLVED] My PC has started lagging and stuttering for no apparent reason. Any ideas?

[ShredAgain]

Right, so, I've started noticing that recently my computer has been pretty laggy and stuttery for no apparent reason. While sitting on the desktop, I'll try to move my mouse, and the whole thing will freeze up for a moment, before finally responding. Sometimes it'll freeze up a couple times in a row before responding properly. I'm not sure what could be causing it, as I'm fairly certain there isn't really anything happening in the background that I don't know about. Task manager says the 2 most intensive things happening on my computer at any given time are Chrome and the Anti-Malware Exe from Windows Defender. My drives seem to be reasonably performing. My SSD has 113GB remaining (My OS and primary app drive) and my HDD RAID has 253GB left. The rest of my specs are in my Signature. Even as I'm typing this, the cursor keeps freezing as I'm hitting keys, but it never misses a keystroke and it always catches up. It's just super frustrating to deal with, and I'm hoping that someone might have an idea or suggestion that can help me fix this, or at the very least find out what's causing it. Many thanks in advance!

 

[rocktalkrock]

Are your Power Options set to High Performance?
Go to "Power Options > Advanced Settings > Hard disk > Turn off hard disk after". How many minutes before disks turn off?

 

[ShredAgain]

Are your Power Options set to High Performance?
Go to "Power Options > Advanced Settings > Hard disk > Turn off hard disk after". How many minutes before disks turn off?

I swapped to "Ryzen Balanced". It says the hard disk is set to turn off after 20 minutes. I was on "High Performance" before I switched, and the hard disk was set to turn off after 20 minutes also.

 

[rocktalkrock]

I swapped to "Ryzen Balanced". It says the hard disk is set to turn off after 20 minutes. I was on "High Performance" before I switched, and the hard disk was set to turn off after 20 minutes also.

That could be your problem. Once the HDD is turned off, when you need to access it again it will take a second or two for the disk to spin up. That will cause your computer to freeze while it waits for the disk to start up again. I have my hard disks set to turn off after 90 minutes to avoid this problem.

 

[ShredAgain]

That could be your problem. Once the HDD is turned off, when you need to access it again it will take a second or two for the disk to spin up. That will cause your computer to freeze while it waits for the disk to start up again. I have my hard disks set to turn off after 90 minutes to avoid this problem.

It's happening in the middle of me using it, and like I said, my OS is on an SSD. There's nothing to spin up.

 

[ShredAgain]

So I'm not quite sure what fixed my issue, but I'm gonna post the steps I took so that it might help someone having a similar issue.

I ran Malwarebytes to see if there was anything on there that shouldn't be. It located an Adware Installer in the directory of my recycle bin, so I quarantined and deleted that. I then took a look at my installed programs to see if anything was in there. I found a program claiming to be an RGB software for a Team Group m.2 SSD and removed that, along with a couple of other old programs that I no longer needed.

I then ran Malwarebytes again, but set it as a custom scan to check for all the standard stuff as well as rootkits and pointed it at my C: and F: drives. It found nothing so I rebooted in safe mode and re-ran the custom scan, which again found nothing. I rebooted into Windows normally, and I've been using it without stutters or lag for about two days now.

I'm not sure which of these steps was the solution, because I didn't restart in between steps, but so far so great. No lockups, no lag, no stutters. No more freezing up search bar, even.