# Random keyboard and mouse freezing for 1-2 seconds, can't find the culprit!



## slanter (Oct 30, 2008)

I've got a customer that has a computer he just bought from Dell a couple months ago running Windows 7 that will entirely freeze up for only a couple seconds, then its fine. if someone happens to be typing while it freezes it'll repeat the last letter you were pressing when you were typing before it froze and repeat it about 4-10 times.

So i've done a lot of crap to this computer, upgraded all the drivers I could find for this brand of dell computer, switched around to various USB ports, done various scans of all sorts, but I think the problem is a process taking up 100% cpu for a couple seconds then going away, because whenever there is a freeze I can see on the task manager "performance graph" that whenever there is a freeze there is a 100% cpu spike. I tried to use the task manager to find which process is using it, but because it freezes while the CPU usage is that high it doesn't SHOW that process, it shows what process is using the most CPU AFTER it freezes, so I can never actually find the process that using 100% CPU because it freezes the task manager for that period of time.

I need to find some sort of process graph that will show me what processes used the most cpu over a period of time and records it so I can go back and find it, if anybody has seen something that works like that i'd appreciate the info. Also, if anyone has any other ideas on what might be causing the brief freezing i'm open to ideas.

Thanks for your time!


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## VirGnarus (Jun 28, 2010)

There's a few advanced items for just that.

The first one is Process Explorer. No doubt as soon as you run this baby, you'll want to replace task manager with it (it has the option). It's essentially a very powerful version of the task manager, and details a considerable amount of anything going on in the PC. You wanna be looking at both CPU and Cswitch Delta columns. You may also double-click the graphs to bring a window displaying graphs for all performance monitoring. Get familiar with it, there's a lot more to gain from it.

Second item is Process Monitor. It's a capturing device for all registry, file and process operations. The resulting capture file can get big, so here's what you should do:

1. Close any and every program running you can, both background and foreground. The less running, the less activity in the capture file.

2. To test, since you said even typing stutters, try typing in notepad while it's stuttering. Note exact time of stutter right down to the second (open Windows clock).

When you've considered those two notes, open Process Monitor, it will start capturing immediately. Test with notepad and have it stutter a couple times (but at most 15 seconds of capturing). Stop capturing with the magnifying glass icon, then save to file (select "all events"). Compress (cuz it's gonna be beefy) into a zip/rar/7z/etc., and send it our way. Tell us the exact times of the stuttering so we can pinpoint any oddities during those time periods.

I can tell you more later if neither of these provide that answers you seek. There's other great performance monitoring tools to help.


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## slanter (Oct 30, 2008)

Ok, i've been working with the process explorer program and i've been confused, looking at the CPU usage history graph I don't see any spikes associated with the cpu when the temporary freezing occurs, BUT It still shows up in the task manager as a obvious 100% spike. 

I ran the process manager and got a capture of a freezing event, but due to the nature of the freezing its a little hard to get multiple captures of it in one logfile. It freezes for a second or two every couple minutes, so I just ran it for ten second intervals until it had a hiccup and then I just stopped it as soon as the computer resumed and saved the logfile, so if theres anything to see it should be in the couple seconds before the logfile ends.

Downloading: Logfile2.zip - Uploadingit

Hopefully someone has more luck than me. 

Probably unrelated, but about once a day the computer screen goes black for a second, then comes back on and says "the display driver has stopped responding and has recovered," did it with an nvidia 9300 AND with the onboard video. Probably unrelated, but thought i'd mention it.


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## slanter (Oct 30, 2008)

Ok, so if i look at the "Show one graph per CPU" the CPU spike shows "CPU 3 (Node 0) 100%" but doesn't say what program is using 100%.


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## VirGnarus (Jun 28, 2010)

Sorry mate, I haven't lost ya.

I won't be able to analyze the file you sent until I have time back home to do so. Work PC won't be able to run em most likely. 

The recovery thing is the TDR recovery kicking in, though fortunately in your case it recovers, whereas in others it'll continue to do so several times until it bsods. You may wanna look at updating your graphics drivers just in case. Matter of fact, if you haven't already done so, give your whole system a firmware/driver update.

Also, are you saying that you see a cpu spike in regular Task Manager but it doesn't show up in Process Explorer? That may be caused by an interrupt storm, but also possibly that you simply have the refresh interval set too large. Go to View then Update Speed and change it to a smaller interval. Note this will increase cpu usage of Process Explorer itself, but it will give more granularity on the graphs and offers more detail on the situation. Also, when you arrange CPU or CSwitch Delta in Process Explorer, during the freezing, do you see anything show up at top of list?


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## slanter (Oct 30, 2008)

I thought they didn't correspond before, but I just didn't have each CPU showing a graph. the screenshot I posted shows one of those freezing spikes. I actually do think the video error i'm getting is related, because I noticed that on most occasions when the Video error occurs it happens right after a freeze instance, but not every time. So every Video driver error is preceeded by a freeze, but not every freeze causes a video error. 

I've upgraded all the drivers on the computer I could, chipset, audio, network...I've updated, deleted, and rolled back the graphics drivers and it doesn't seem to have an effect. In fact taking out the video card and running the computer on just the built in video also gives me almost the exact same error, just with "intel" in it in a few places instead of "nvidia"


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## VirGnarus (Jun 28, 2010)

That is bloody strange that both onboard and card are giving the same issue. It'd be hard to chock it up as driver or hardware issue if that's the case, but a user mode program trying to access your video drivers and is sending em junk requests that's causing em to timeout on. Again, we can't tell with just the graph what's causing it. Have you considered looking at the CPU/Cswitch Delta columns in Process Explorer as mentioned previously? You may wanna set it to .5 sec intervals for update speed. 

There are other methods on monitoring this I used to do back in the day but it's escaped me now. I'll research on them, as well as find the opportunity to report back on those files you sent.


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## slanter (Oct 30, 2008)

Ok, I have no clue if this is actually the culprit or just trimming a branch by taking a chainsaw to the trunk, but I decided to pretty much go the "diminishing returns" method of service identification, namely disabling half the services, see if it freezes, if it doesn't disable the other half, if it does disable half of THOSE services, etc etc. So far the only one that i've found that the computer freezes if its on, and doesn't freeze if its off, and its the "windows management instrumentation" service.

The computer seems to run fairly decently with the service disabled, but I have no clue what sort of far reaching implications leaving this service off will create and no clue how to "fix" this service so it stops freezing. Haven't had the Video error today yet, so hard to say if thats fixed.


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## VirGnarus (Jun 28, 2010)

There's a number of applications and whatnot that utilize WMI. Many of them are applications that operate with hardware drivers in order to change hardware settings, or to display hardware information. Examples would be the control settings software for ATI or Nvidia, or overclocking software. However I don't know of any that are required for normal operation for hardware, and I highly doubt there are.

I'm finally available after work today, and will be able to examine your PM log file.


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## VirGnarus (Jun 28, 2010)

Phew, what a weekend. Sorry bout that, but finally got around to it.

I see an unusual stream of activity coming from the AVG IDS agent near the end of the logfile. In fact, that's the only activity that is taking place during that time. It's just a massive wave where the AVG IDS agent butts into everything else and does its own thing for a while before letting other processes run.

It's pretty much a personal recommendation that you don't use AVG and work with something less intrusive (ha, punny) such as MSE. If you want a full feature set in a free package, Avast is preferable. This is just not the first time I've seen AVG becoming a resource hog unwillingly. In fact, quite frequently it does so, and it ends up bringing people here to TSF wondering what the deal is.

If you purchased AVG, and you are still determined to keep it, there's a couple other things I've noticed and possible solutions to this:

- I noticed that AVG is constantly referring to Wow64 dlls, which means it's a 32 bit program. Is there no 64-bit version available? If there is, you may wanna switch over to it.

- A full uninstall (all parts, including that detestable AVG toolbar) and a reinstall is recommended. Make sure to restart the PC *twice* after the uninstall and before the reinstall. Often times at restart from uninstall it will finish cleanup work, so another restart after that should ensure everything's in the clear. Of course, make sure to restart after installation. 

- As hinted too before, you have AVG toolbar installed. Toolbars are a nono, and are often very poorly coded and are resource-hungry and just downright superfluous. Take careful attention if you reinstall AVG, and make sure not to select anything like the toolbar for your next reinstall.


That's all I can give at the moment. Again, apologize for the continued delays. I hope this will be of assistance despite the fact. Happy Easter, mate.


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