Lag every three seconds

[David22]

I've been having this problem for a few days now, and it affects all of my games. Every (approximately) three seconds the game clings up for a fraction of a second, this happens the entire time I am playing. It's worse in some games than others, but it's always there. I find it worst in Oblivion, but its bad in HL2 also. I play a lot of guild wars, in which it is less noticeable.

I've tried everything I can think of or find on the internet short of reinstalling anything. I've updated video drivers, ran AVG anti-spyware and anti-virus, looked through programs that boot at start-up, and probably other things that I'm forgetting at the moment.

I would really appreciate any help that you can give. I can usually solve problems like this but this one makes me want to smash things.

-Dave

Operating System: Windows XP Home Edition (5.1, Build 2600) Service Pack 2
MB: 939Dual-SATA2
Processor: AMD Athlon(tm) 64 Processor 3200+, MMX, 3DNow, ~2.2GHz
Memory: 1024MB RAM
Video Card: RADEON X850 Series

[shadowpr]

What processes do you have running in the background?

Have you ran a defrag recently?


Have you added anything, or installed anything recently?

[David22]

I have not run a defrag recently, I'll do that soon.

A few days ago (about the time this started) I installed an Oblivion mod named Deadly Reflexes.
When installing the mod I downloaded a few smaller programs, one named obse.exe and another named wryebash. I installed python 2.5 for wryebash to work.
I've installed a few other things since this has started, but the problem already existed then.

processes include:
SVCHOST.EXE
Setup.exe
AVGEMC.EXE
AVGUPSVC.EXE
readernotify.exe
steam.exe
AVGAMSVR.EXE
iTunesHelper.exe
GUARD.EXE
realshed.exe
AVGCC.EXE
SOUNDMAN.EXE
SVCHOST.EXE
HPZTSB04.EXE
JUSCHED.EXE
ALG.EXE
SPOOLSV.EXE
EXPLORER.EXE
iPddService.exe
SVCHOST.EXE
SVCHOST.EXE
SVCHOST.EXE
SVCHOST.EXE
LSASS.EXE
SERVICES.EXE
WINLOGON.EXE
CSRSS.EXE
SMSS.EXE
System
System Idle Process

[shadowpr]

Try running a defrag, but I would uninstall the mod, and those other files before I did that.

See if that has any affect.

And just to be safe, run a virus scan too. Never know if those other files had some nasties in them.

[David22]

I'm running the defragmenter now.

The virus scan I did yesterday didn't turn up anything, so I'm assuming viruses aren't the problem.

[catacon]

It seems like it could be the mod you downloaded since it started happening right after you installed it. Try uninstalling it and the other files you downloaded with it.

[wolfie]

every ati card i had had the same problem, use nvidia now and i never see that.

wolfie

[David22]

Well, I ran the defragmenter and deleted those files and I can say that the problem is atleast a lot less significant. When I looked at my windows task manager before, it would to show my pcu usage jumping up and down from around ten to fifty. After the defrag it seems to go more from ten to thirty-five. I'd say the problems fixed enough for now, it doesn't bother my playing too mutch, but I'm worried I'll see it again in the future. Thanks for your help.

[liambl]

That CPU usage seems a little high, my 1.5GHz Athlon XP sits idle mostly at 0%, flashing to 5% around every 10 sec. Thats with 33 processes.

[Jaggannath]

David, I'm with liambl on this one... you need to work out what is wrong with your computer, rather than just treating the symptoms. If your computer is idle, CPU usage should be about 0-1% with occasional spikes

What virus scanner you using??

[tomster2300]

Have you done any overclocking on your computer? If you've ramped up the video card to unstable levels then you could be experiencing freezing / artifacts, which means you need to come down on the overclock.

Have any of your games actually crashed?