PC unresponsive for a second or two

[Gren]

My PC has been annoying me for a while now but can't track down what's causing it.

Every now and then it's unresponsive for a second or two. The mouse cursor won't move, games freeze etc. After that second or two the fan seems to kick in for a second and then everything is okay.

Windows 10 latest updates
i5-7400
8GB ram
SSD
GTX 1060

Windows Defender and Malwarebytes

Not the most powerful PC around but this can happen regardless of what I'm doing - surfing (Chrome), Excel or some gaming. My only thought was whether the ram was just too low and it was swapping in/out the SSD. Wondering why the fan would kick in though?

[Knoxville2410]

BIOS update?

[TonyRPH]

Get task manager up on screen and monitor the CPU usage graph - it sounds as though something is using a lot of CPU.

You can also monitor processes in task manager - and see which one is chewing up CPU, even if it's only for a couple of seconds.

Also - you probably don't need Malwarebytes.

[Gren]

TonyRPH said:

Get task manager up on screen and monitor the CPU usage graph - it sounds as though something is using a lot of CPU.

You can also monitor processes in task manager - and see which one is chewing up CPU, even if it's only for a couple of seconds.

Also - you probably don't need Malwarebytes.

Have tried that before. Trouble is this happens every few hours. Will try leaving it always on screen to see if I can see anything when it bites. Most of the time its just Chrome at 2-5% and a few smaller system tasks. If nothing jumps out then I'll try disabling Malwarebytes

[Whoozit]

As said, check in Task Manager what's shooting to 100%.

A couple of things I found with my system (i5-3600 based otherwise similar) which were doing the same. One was background indexing by Windows, now turned off. The other was RAM. Your 8GB is a bit skinny, 16GB will give you a more headroom and reduce the amount of swapping to the SSD.

[maffski]

How full is the SSD? A near full TLC or QLC SSD can freeze when writing (e.g. when writing the to swap) as it re-organises data.

[HiAsAKite]

You need to clear your cookies..




More seriously - what everyone else above me said... (and probably - also below me!)

Edited by HiAsAKite on Friday 20th January 15:59

[TonyRPH]

You can create logfiles using the 'Perfmon' app - some details on how to do this can be found here

[Gren]

Thanks to all who replied.....

Been monitoring Task Manager for a little while and even when CPU usage gets close to 100% (tripadvisor seems to send it rocketing) it's been fine. Need more time I think on this one - will keep an eye on Task Manager and hope to catch it otherwise I can setup a logfile as suggested. One for the weekend

SSD has 33GB free out of 256. Most data files are on a 1TB HDD but I'm sure I can move more if need be

Memory seems stable at around 70% usage but at £20 for another stick it may be an option. How picky do I need to be in matching with what I have? - currently using 1 slot out of 2 with 8GB DDR4 2133mhz UDIMM

Edited by Gren on Friday 20th January 16:32

[Whoozit]

Gren said:

SSD has 33GB free out of 256. Most data files are on a 1TB HDD but I'm sure I can move more if need be

Memory seems stable at around 70% usage but at £20 for another stick it may be an option. How picky do I need to be in matching with what I have? - currently using 1 slot out of 2 with 8GB DDR4 2133mhz UDIMM

Edited by Gren on Friday 20th January 16:32

That SSD's full. Time to upgrade! The good news is Crucial will sell you one with free disk imaging software. I bought and fitted a 1000Gb SSD eighteen months ago, it cost just over £100 then.

I was always told to match memory in pairs, exact model not just specs. Don't know if that is a hangover from motherboard architecture of a few generations ago.

[FourWheelDrift]

Do you leave chrome open in the background when gaming?

Chrome has a Software Reporter Too that occasionally starts up, using a fair bit of CPU processing power and if your game is heavy CPU limited could make it stutter.

Other that when was the last time you gave your PC a good clean out from dust and renewed the CPU thermal paste, could be a simple overheating issue.

[V8covin]

Are you sure it's not windows updates in the background ?
That used to completely stifle my old pc

[HiAsAKite]

More serious reply than my other one..

the other one to check with Windows 10 is if it trying to do a OneDrive sync in the background.... (I ended up turning off the process from start up for family members that do not use OneDrive)

[pquinn]

When mine did this you could see in the Resource Monitor that the disk was freezing up and the queue was going nowhere. SSD eventually died.

It's amazing how quickly SSDs can wear out on a standard Windows 10 install, especially recent ones which don't really have a lot of total write capacity. And once they're mostly full they're doing a lot of writes for wear levelling.

[Gren]

So after waiting for around 24 hours (2-3 hours of actual use) it happened again. Looking back through the charts in Task manager there was no spike in CPU use, memory use and disk access. I jumped straight into the process list and nothing unusual there. Same old processes taking the usual resources.

A few other notes :

- I've freed up more of the SSD. I now have 50gb free out of the 256
- I don't have OneDrive setup in the background. I do use Google Drive though
- It's not Windows updating in the background

Next step is disabling MalwareBytes. Certainly the real time element. It's always in the top 10 processes although no spike at the point in question. I've also noticed that it checks hourly for 'threat updates'. I've left that checked for the moment whilst I see if this step works.

Edited by Gren on Sunday 22 January 12:48

[twister]

Check the event viewer logs to see if it's throwing any warnings or errors at the time you notice these pauses/slowdowns - in the past I've seen this sort of behaviour when Windows was struggling to do something (read/write a HD, access a network resource etc) due to a config error or hardware fault.

[pquinn]

Gren said:

So after waiting for around 24 hours (2-3 hours of actual use) it happened again. Looking back through the charts in Task manager there was no spike in CPU use, memory use and disk access. I jumped straight into the process list and nothing unusual there. Same old processes taking the usual resources.

Go to the Task Manager and start Resource Monitor. It's much better at showing you what is happening under the surface. On mine it was only looking at the disk activity statistics that would show what was locked.

Also handy for seeing what's busy writing to disk and using up its limited lifespan.

[Gren]

twister said:

Check the event viewer logs to see if it's throwing any warnings or errors at the time you notice these pauses/slowdowns - in the past I've seen this sort of behaviour when Windows was struggling to do something (read/write a HD, access a network resource etc) due to a config error or hardware fault.

Nothing there at around the time involved. I can see when I quite from MBAM and the last message before that was 30 minutes earlier telling me length of system uptime

pquinn said:

Go to the Task Manager and start Resource Monitor. It's much better at showing you what is happening under the surface. On mine it was only looking at the disk activity statistics that would show what was locked.

Also handy for seeing what's busy writing to disk and using up its limited lifespan.

Done. Let's see what this shows. Frustrating as this only happens every few hours of use

[Gren]

Okay so Resource Monitor seemed to pick up something as it's happened couple of times this afternoon.

Both times the disk access graph went off the chart. Most of the big write jobs seemed to be coming from Chrome and one (or a couple looking similar) seemed to stand out.

Was marked as 'System' and the filename was 'User\Gren\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\User Data\Safe Browsing\UrlSoceng.store'. Seems to be some safe browsing databases that Chrome is syncing/updating

Not sure if this is the cause. I'll keep an eye on it. Anyone seen anything like this?

[xeny]

Do you have account sync turn on, or any Chrome extensions installed?