Weird Issues when gaming, help please!

[slimjim2417]

I've been a PC gamer for a long time now and it's always been smooth sailing. However, the past couple weeks I've been having a lot of issues and it's really infuriating. the issues I have include:
-Random stutters (freezing for 1-2 seconds)
-Game randomly alt-tabbing itself, typically does it twice back-to-back and then will be fine for a while
-mouse becoming unlocked and constantly moving to other monitor (installed a mouse lock tool to help when it happens)(yes im gaming in fullscreen not borderless windows)

My specs are very good and should not be doing this:
-Mobo: ASRock Z270 extreme4
-RAM: 16gb corsair ddr4
-GPU's: SLI GTX 1070's
CPU: i7-7700k
SSD: Samsung Evo 250gb
HDD: WD 2tb
PSU: Corsair 850 modular

As you can see my specs are fairly top of the line and I shouldn't be having these issues. I do most of my gaming in 4k 60fps not a problem but once these issues began some more intense games like bf1 I lowered to 2560x1440 but the issues still occur. Cooling is not an issue either as my CPU is watercooled and my case is a CM master case pro 5 full of corsair fans so airflow is top notch. Most of my games are run off my HDD while a couple are run off my SSD but the issues still occur in the games on my SSD however not as severe.

The issues started happening around 3 weeks ago and I've been slowly getting more infuriated with them. Around the same time I started to notice that the background app tray in win10 started to have the bottom half appear below taskbar ad not display icons correctly. I'll attach a screen shot to show what I mean.

I've done my benchmarking, CPU fine, GPU fine, RAM fine, SSD running at full speed, HDD running optimally so I don't know what could be causing this.

I've debated doing a system reset and give windows a clean install but I really don't want to take the time to reinstall everything as it's a huge inconvenience. I don't know if this is like a bug in windows as it did start happening after an update however I've updated multiple times since and the issues have not been resolved. If anyone has any suggestions please help me!

Screenshot: https://ibb.co/nxDAmd

 

[Frag Maniac]

Besides hardware bench marking, have you checked for corrupt or missing system files via a sfc /scannow test? The bit about the taskbar being screwed up makes me wonder if something's messed up with some system files. I would also run a malware scan, like with Malwarebytes.

Note that the most thorough way to run a sfc /scannow test is by first running a DISM.exe check.

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/4026529/windows-10-using-system-file-checker

Malwarebytes
https://www.malwarebytes.com/

 

[slimjim2417]

Besides hardware bench marking, have you checked for corrupt or missing system files via a sfc /scannow test? The bit about the taskbar being screwed up makes me wonder if something's messed up with some system files. I would also run a malware scan, like with Malwarebytes.

Note that the most thorough way to run a sfc /scannow test is by first running a DISM.exe check.

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/4026529/windows-10-using-system-file-checker

Malwarebytes
https://www.malwarebytes.com/

Thanks for the reply Frag. I went ahead and proceeded with a system restore anyway. However this did not solve the issue. I haven't spent enough time gaming since the wipe to notice if stuttering or alt tabbing still occurs however the taskbar is still doing the thing. I ran the scan as you suggested and windows found no errors. I really don't know whats wrong with my computer...

 

[Frag Maniac]

I ran the scan as you suggested and windows found no errors.

Did you run DISM.exe first?

Only thing I can think of if you did the DISM.exe/sfc /scannow checks is maybe something you've installed recently is messing up Windows somehow. If you have a lot of startups running see if you can disable any that you don't need.