an unknown freeze.. often

[bibby]

Ya know when you're on the toilet and you get a sudden shiver? My brother has them all the time, and so does my computer. For months now, at a frequency of every half hour, everything freezes for 2 seconds. Anything visual stops. Game audio with loop a short number of times, but mp3s and mpeg/avi audio will garble as it slowly pushes through (afterwards the video speeds up to sync). Using AnalogX's NetStat Live, I noticed a spike in my Incoming/Outgoing at 250KBps during these episodes, with no change in CPU usage. I run on a wireless LAN, but this phenomenon occurs even when the link is severed. Scheduled tasks were checked, and norton2003 finds nothing. I've been seen staring down Task Manager with a stopwatch just waiting to see something odd. I know this is strange, and an answer may not be easy, but I'm telling the tale in hopes of receiving a few suggestions. What's yours?

 

[fluxvoovoo]

First off - disable the advanced power maintenance feature in control panel. Then boot to your setup bios and disable power saving software there also if it is enabled. Try it then, if it still occurs take it to safe mode and test it, then to a pure dos prompt if need be. If it is still doing it you can probably rule out any kind of software error. there is always the possibility of an electrical issue causing this - Try the system over at a friends or neighbors house to rule this out. If for some weird reason it turns out you have a problem with your power then you could consider purchasing an inexpensive power conditioner or battery backup/conditioner combo to plug into - not a bad idea regardless. If it turns out to be a windows error you could first try a Clean boot using the system configuration utility to try and narrow down the culprit. If need be, a system restore might be in order.
Good luck and let us know what happens regardless.

 

[rockerfellerz]

That spike sounds like it could be spyware or virus activity. You don't say anything about your hardware setup or what kind of protections you run, but eliminating the spyware or virus as the problem would be a good first step.
Mp3's and video take a lot of proccessing power so if your cpu is old (slower) some choppiness is normal. If you post more details about your system that would be helpfull. If you're going through Hell...keep going... (Winston Churchill)
RocKeRFelLerZ

 

[smah]

What's the OS? My first suspicion would be that it is somehow netowrk related - either broadcasting it's presence or looking for the presence of something else.

If the OS is XP, it may be Universal Plug & Play looking for other network devices to add to My Network Places.

 

[bibby]

Thanks for the replies: My hardware set up is : AMD Duron 166Mhz, 256RAM , 40+1GB HD, VIA motherboard. Running Windows 2000Pro and Norton 2003 (always on auto) and AdAware. Spyware is still a possibility ,but a virus may not. I want to try all these solutions. There's a UPS with the network router I might try to power up from. While I'm there, I might as well trade places with the directly connected computer. I just realized that when I disabled the link to the LAN, I didn't pull out of the workgroup, so it still might be looking.. Thanks again, if it works, i'll post the answer.