Intermittent slowdowns. VERY wierd! Ideas?

edited November 2003 in Hardware
This has never happened before I installed the new heatsink and fan, and OCed my CPU further:

After a perfectly normal boot, the computer would run for hours on end w/o trouble. When I say hours, I mean it could run for 20 or more since boot without any problem at all.

Then, when I return to the computer (after having last used it.... around an hour or two before) I notice IE takes nearly 90 seconds to start. Finding this odd, I close IE, and open Halo.

Halo takes nearly 5 minutes to load. No real hard drive thrashing of any kind. It's acting more like the CPU is 1/16th it's speed. The hard drive simply gets accessed less often.

After getting sick of waiting for Halo to finish loading (the loading screen was sitting there forever) I bring up the Task Manager (using Ctrl Alt Del) and wait approx. 3 seconds for the T.M. to appear.

I close it, and instruct the computer to reboot. The computer takes it's time. Windows asks to wait for nearly every program running in the tray, even explorer.exe itself, before sluggishly rebooting.

The computer POSTs fine. I go into the BIOS, increase the vCore, vDIMM, chance the latency setting to something more aggressive (what I had them to prior to increasing the OC). Saved CMOS settings rebooted, computer POSTs fine again, finds all devices fine (not slowly) and loads Windows fine up UNTIL the desktop itself is loaded.


The desktop icons take nearly forever to actually appear, and all the tray apps take their time as well. I quick glance at the TM, explorer (the task bar still is loading) is only using 8% of the CPU, while F@H is using the rest. I close F@H, an the rest of the resources go to idle, while explorer keeps with it's 8% CPU usage, and takes it's sweet ass time booting.

I go upstairs to consult Thrax (thinking I has having some OCing oddity, which it may be) he says it might be a compound mem error, and says I should reboot. I tell him I have done so numerous times already, hasn’t fixed the issue. He recommends powering down entirely. I go back to the computer effected (listed in my sig) and shut it down.

The computer shuts down fine, as if nothing was wrong in the first place... it just "decided" it was going to work correctly. I power it back on, everything is fine. Windows, and the desktop loads ok, at it's usual lightning speed. Whatever bug it had, it apparently solved itself, without the reboots/shutdowns effecting it whatsoever.





I believe this is the second time this has occurred. The first time I noticed IE was loading slowly, but I didn’t have time to mess with it. I just finished what I was going to do (SM) and left the room for a few hours. Came back, problem solved.

The BIOS settings are not unlike what I had things set since April (accept for the CPU settings, of course). I hadn’t touched any of the settings for nearly 24 hours before this strange behavior occurred (the second time, not sure about the first time).

I have the temp monitored (using Coolmon), and the temps are no where near out of the ordinary, even while this behavior occurs. The "CPU temp throttling" is disabled in CMOS, as usual.


Anyone have some ideas? I’m stumped. Intermittent behavior like this points to heat, but the CPU’s temp is fine (as is the case’s). It’s also strange that the problem seemed to go away on it’s own, without being effected by rebooting.

Comments

  • csimoncsimon Acadiana Icrontian
    edited November 2003
    what is F@H priority set to idle or low?
  • edited November 2003
    idle.

    I dont think it has anything to do with F@H, cause I just cloed the core (shoulda mentioned that) so it only stopped folding for a little bit. It's also running right now, and giving me no probs whatsoever...
  • Geeky1Geeky1 University of the Pacific (Stockton, CA, USA)
    edited November 2003
    Only thing I can think of is a fuggered windows install.
  • edited November 2003
    Geeky1 had this to say
    Only thing I can think of is a fuggered windows install.

    I really, really doubt thats the only solution.
  • Geeky1Geeky1 University of the Pacific (Stockton, CA, USA)
    edited November 2003
    Never said it was the only solution. Just said it was the only thing I could think of.
  • TheLostSwedeTheLostSwede Trondheim, Norway Icrontian
    edited November 2003
    SMJ,

    Have you fumbeled with the services in ANY way?
    My 2k partition is stripped down to it's underwear and i have disabled more services than there is almost. After that, opening advanced properties takes forever and a half.

    Just a thought. Take a screenie of your task manager so i can see what you are running.
  • edited November 2003
    Here's the TM.


    I disabled a bunch of services a while back. I doubt it's any of that causing the problem though, as it's only doing this some of the time (and only 2 times so far that I know of). ALso, I've never had this since I OCed to 2.3 Ghz.
  • TheLostSwedeTheLostSwede Trondheim, Norway Icrontian
    edited November 2003
    Ok,

    Can you try and use the "safe" column as a guide on this link? http://www.blackviper.com./WinXP/servicecfg.htm

    Write down what you have or backup your current service configuration. I think the problem is there somewhere. If you use 2K, they have a guide for that as well.
  • Omega65Omega65 Philadelphia, Pa
    edited November 2003
    Back down the OC and see if the problem goes away. The extra OC may be causing something (HD controller maybe) to fail.
  • edited November 2003
    Mackanz had this to say
    Ok,

    Can you try and use the "safe" column as a guide on this link? http://www.blackviper.com./WinXP/servicecfg.htm

    Write down what you have or backup your current service configuration. I think the problem is there somewhere. If you use 2K, they have a guide for that as well.

    Thats what I used to guide the service shutdown already.
    Omega65 had this to say
    Back down the OC and see if the problem goes away. The extra OC may be causing something (HD controller maybe) to fail.


    I doubt that's the case, but I'll give it a try as soon as the problem rears it's head again.
  • edited November 2003
    I wonder if the NB is overheating and causing the problem...
  • edited November 2003
    I too have been having these slow downs on my pc (before I fired it), also my mums pc which spinner built is suffering as well.

    Very occasionally the system slows right down!

    during which the mouse works, but it merely turns to the sand timer If I click or double click on a program to run.

    If a program is running, then it runs certain aspects of it but not others.

    This can last as long as 5 mins! the task manager won't run, nor will it shutdown etc.

    After this freakish period is over, it will suddenly do everything you asked it to do in one go. So I normally have loads of internet explorer windows appearing!

    Very annoying.

    Both mobos are nvidia2, different makes.

    I am suspicious of folding for causing this, but I really haven't been able to get to the bottom of it.

    I will be doing a fresh install of mine when m replacement mobo arrives, so I will see if the problem still exists and if so do more to figure it out.
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