Delay when typing before characters appear onscreen 1

[goombawaho]

I built a computer for a customer and they are having the problem I mentioned in the title. Periodically, they will be typing in an application and nothing appears onscreen for 5 seconds followed by a barrage of text that appears in a tardy manner.

It happened when I was there and I checked Norton and it didn't seem to be running any kind of scan. The thing is, this is a rocket fast computer. I don't see how anything could slow it down!!! It's been in service for 4 months and apparently this has been happening for a while. I'd appreciate theories or troubleshooting steps!!

Specs:
ASUS P8H77-V LE mobo
Intel Core i7-3770 Ivy Bridge Quad-Core 3.4GHz
8GB RAM
240GB Intel 530 SSD for Windows 8
RAID 1 - Western Digital RE4 1TB (WD1003FBYX) for data storage
EVGA 1GB video card (don't have exact model handy)

"Living tomorrow is everyone's sorrow.
Modern man's daydreams have turned into nightmares.

 

[edfair]

The one I remember was the video card. Was a long time ago.

Ed Fair
Give the wrong symptoms, get the wrong solutions.

 

[goombawaho]

The one you remember... what? That response wasn't worth a nickel. E L A B O R A T E por favor.

"Living tomorrow is everyone's sorrow.
Modern man's daydreams have turned into nightmares.

 

[SamBones]

Yeah, that was a pretty obtuse response.

Is it happening in a specific program? I have a few programs that are pretty badly behaved in that they seem to lock up the computer when waiting for disk or network IO. They keyboard buffer though accepts a lot of keystrokes, all of which get dumped into whatever window is active when it wakes up again.

Bring up Task Manager, then launch the Resource Monitor (button at the bottom of the "Performance" tab). That will give you a more granular look at what's running, and what resources are being consumed. If you can attach a second monitor, maybe have it running on one while the customer works on the other.

Also, make sure you do the normal scans for viruses, adware, etc, etc.

And as always, remember the video card. It was a long time ago.

 

[rclarke250]

I responded once to a post, that I was having an issue with my Nvidia card GTX 560, with certain drivers only, and while in a game it would work great. But in Firefox or chrome it would give an issue that would appear to be the system freezing or halting momentarily. It would act up trying to type in replies on this board. Typing would appear to freeze, but mouse would still function to move, but the button input would not. And some times but not very often I would get a message saying my video driver halted, and needed to restart. Go back from at the time any driver in the 320 family to 314.xx and it would work great. They changed something because I don't have the issue with the 330 or 340 family of drivers, and the only thing I have changed is larger a larger SSD, and a larger HDD, everything else is the same, I even cloned the drives, so same OS. Drove me crazy for months.

 

[xwb]

What kind of keyboard is it: bluetooth or some kind of wireless or wired USB?

If it is wired USB, check the USB drivers.

If it is wireless, could it be picking up interference from somewhere? Does a wired keyboard behave the same?

 

[edfair]

Sorry, but it was intended as a .02 comment that the particular failure was in the graphics card and that it was enough of an issue that I remembered the grief years later.

No great diagnostic breakthrough, the system was rebuilt, and the replacement card resolved the problem. It wssn't important enough to put the card back in for diagnostic purposes.

Ed Fair
Give the wrong symptoms, get the wrong solutions.

 

[goombawaho]

Thank you for the replies. It's happening in "normal" applications - MS Office, browsers, so basically everything.
It's a wireless USB keyboard/mouse combo.

I guess I'll try updating video drivers, USB keyboard driver/software and/or a wired keyboard.

I recall checking Process Explorer and all was quiet - no CPU hog.
By the way, I have another customer with Windows 7 complaining right now about the same thing. I didn't build that machine - it's an off-the-shelf Gateway. Will be very interesting to see if they both have Nvidia video cards. On the machine that I built, I could uninstall the add-on Nvidia card and use the built-in Intel graphics as another test.

"Living tomorrow is everyone's sorrow.
Modern man's daydreams have turned into nightmares.

 

[rclarke250]

Is there a FW update for the SSD also? And make sure you have an updated Intel Rapid Storage Technology driver and application package, those 2 things have been an issue for me as well in the past for systems with little freezes, or outright blue screen crashes.

 

[goombawaho]

Two weeks ago there was no SSD FW update when I checked. I will check for a new IRST driver though I wouldn't ever have expected that.

"Living tomorrow is everyone's sorrow.
Modern man's daydreams have turned into nightmares.

 

[goombawaho]

So, a new keyboard seems to have fixed the problem after I bled the customer dry doing other troubleshooting and updates. Hurray.

"Living tomorrow is everyone's sorrow.
Modern man's daydreams have turned into nightmares.