why does vista commandeer my machine at random times?

June 4, 2009 7:34 PM

my computer intermittently becomes nearly unusable. google-fu has failed me. help!

So, about a year ago I bought a new pc. I use it mostly for gaming. For the most part, it has been great, runs new games smoothly, etc. However, a few times a week, the machine seems to decide that it needs to do something very important for 1-3 hours. During this time, the hard disk LED is blinking constantly, and my system is anywhere from pokey to so extremely sluggish as to make it unusable. After the system is done doing whatever it does, it goes back to being my nice new powerful machine for a few days at least.

It's definitely not that it's too slow for running Vista, as it's decently powerful machine (HP pavillion, 3 GB RAM, nice nVidia card, good cpu). I've exhausted my google-fu on the issue; turned off superfetch, indexing, auto-defragging, auto-restore points, and it doesn't seem to help. Tried looking at task manager and services while it's thrashing and can't figure anything out. I regularly do virus scans with AVG. Anyone have any ideas?

posted by ripple to computers & internet (14 comments total)

Turn on disk i/o columns (read/write/other) in task manager and see what process(es) access the disk.

That's under task manager, processes, view/select columns.
posted by flug at 7:56 PM on June 4 [3 favorites]

Do what flug said and report the big offenders.
posted by cmfletcher at 8:20 PM on June 4

Did you turn off AVGs scheduled scan?
posted by zerokey at 8:29 PM on June 4

It sounds like AVG is doing this. By default it does a daily scan.
posted by damn dirty ape at 8:34 PM on June 4

Check your Task Scheduler too. Just type Task Scheduler in the "Start Search" box and it will be pulled up. Sounds like an auto update or auto run of something to me.
posted by gemmy at 8:41 PM on June 4

Thirding a scheduled virus scan as the likely cause for this. Here are my recommended settings for AVG 8.5.
posted by flabdablet at 9:30 PM on June 4

Try visiting a major antivirus site such as Symantec.com. Then try McAfee and the Windows Update site. Just to rule something out. I just want to see if you can connect to those sites; you don't have to download anything.

Also, look at your Event Viewer (Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Event Viewer), and go through the list, looking for anything at the times you mention.
posted by converge at 11:30 PM on June 4

If you have windows update turned on, yer always updating.
posted by hypersloth at 1:12 AM on June 5

"If you have windows update turned on, yer always updating."

That's an exaggeration at best. If you are referring to BITS (background transfer) it should pose an almost unnoticeable burden.

Indexing for local search--somehow gone awry--is a possibility.
posted by bz at 7:19 AM on June 5

Oops. I hit "Post" too soon.

Try running sysinternal's Process Monitor to see where the cycles are going.

I suspect one of the processes subordinate to svchost.exe is the culprit.
posted by bz at 7:43 AM on June 5 [1 favorite]

Just when I burn an AskMe post on this, the problem refuses to happen... will update the thread as soon as I have some data. It's not AVG running scans - I have that set to happen only once per week. No problem hitting antivirus sites either.
posted by ripple at 4:02 PM on June 5

A couple of things that can do this are Windows automatic update, and disk Indexing.
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 6:29 PM on June 5

Ive seen this happen on an old version of windows update client. Just visit the windows update website and let it install the new client if it asks.

Check you event viewer and run diskmon next time it happens.
posted by damn dirty ape at 8:32 PM on June 5

It started happening again. I took a good look at the disk i/o columns in task manager, and couldn't find anything using lots of disk that wasn't a vital system process except one of avg's. Decided to try uninstalling avg and installing another major AV software (name withheld). So far, so good.
posted by ripple at 6:59 PM on June 12