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I am getting brief pauses every few seconds on my win 7 machine. It's pretty new, just win7 and vmware installed.

Every five seconds, the system pauses for a second. It's very annoying. Ideas?

This is a brand new system that I just built and seemed to work ok a few days ago.

MedicineMan
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  • Are you sure that your whole system freezes? What is the hardware you are using? – Michael K Sep 09 '11 at 07:47
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    Check the hard drive. Also, make sure your network drivers are up to date. Try uninstalling Adobe Flash as well (as ridiculous as that sounds). Uninstall VMWare and see if that's the problem. –  Sep 09 '11 at 07:48
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    Try [this procedure](http://superuser.com/questions/205298/how-do-i-troubleshoot-a-windows-7-freeze-or-slowness) and report back, capture at least 2 or 3 pauses so that I can see it repeat (so I know the actual cause rather than an coming up with an irregular CPU spike). – Tamara Wijsman Sep 09 '11 at 08:28
  • From the trace, I saw that every 3-5 seconds, there was a spike of 100% cpu usage. I couldn't figure out what process was using the cpu though. Is there another tool / trace we can use? – MedicineMan Sep 14 '11 at 00:01
  • @MedicinMan: No, this is the one and only tool that allows you to look into this at an *extreme depth*. So, either upload the trace or figure out how to select a time range and right click to get a summary table. I however doubt that you will look in the right place because it's not the cause of the CPU usage, the CPU usage is rather a consequence of another problem most likely a driver shown in the DPC or Interrupts graph. – Tamara Wijsman Sep 15 '11 at 16:58
  • I've has some problems like this caused by a process called Bonjour (used by apple/ipod/safari) – rlb.usa Sep 15 '11 at 21:51
  • @Tom, sorry tom, I thought I had uploaded my trace a few days ago, but I don't see it in the comment section anymore. I'll upload again – MedicineMan Sep 15 '11 at 22:31

4 Answers4

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If you have WiFi, one reason for such freezes might be Windows periodically scanning for wireless networks (even if you are already connected).

You may disable this behavior using WLAN Optimizer or Vista Anti-Lag (the latter is for Vista but may still be worth trying). They should be used with "run as administrator".

In theory, if you are already connected to your most preferred wireless network or if you have disabled the "automatically connected to more preferred networks" setting in your wireless profile (default setting on new profiles), then wireless scan is already supposedly disabled, but sometimes it is not.

Please let me know how you are connected to the Internet and whether you have a wireless network card.

harrymc
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  • I do have a wireless card and I do have internet. I did check wifi drivers the other day and they were updated. I'll check again. – MedicineMan Sep 14 '11 at 00:00
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    The simplest check would be to disable the wireless card and see whether these freezes disappear. – harrymc Sep 14 '11 at 05:59
  • I've had this problem before, and I've suspected WiFi, but it's been gone for a while... I think it was the driver in my case. – user541686 Sep 18 '11 at 08:28
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Might want to check DPC's and IO activity, a faulty HDD could cause it. Use the following resources to determine this:

To determine System Activity/DPC issues: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896653.aspx (run as administrator)

To determine potential IO activity the former tool may help, but use "Resource Monitor" - access it from your start menu. Be sure to look at the HDD and Memory tabs.

On the memory tab look at the Hard Faults/Sec value, on Disk look at Queue Length, and Response time.

If the issue is DPC related, you might be able to mitigate it by increasing your PCI Latency Timer in BIOS.

Howard Lince III
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Simply use ProcessLasso. ProcessLasso will try to improve system responsiveness during high load periods.

If there's still the same problem, do following steps:

  1. Reboot your system in Safe Mode (during boot, press F8 to bring gateway to safe mode).
  2. Use the system same way in Safe Mode.
  3. If there's no problem in Safe Mode, reboot your system normally and close unnecessary processes using task manager. To know about a process, simply Google process name.
  4. If the same problem arises in safe mode too, simply re-install Windows 7 or restore to factory backup image.
  5. If there's still the problem, time to contact manufacturer support because there's a hardware faulty. I hope, your new system is under warranty coverage.

Alternatively, do following steps:
1. Download setup of Windows Performance Analysis Tools for your Windows version.
2. Install the software on your system.
3. Right click command prompt icon in start menu and click run as administrator.
4. Copy following command and paste in command prompt (right click > Paste): 

xperf -start perf!GeneralProfiles.InBuffer && timeout -1 && xperf -stop perf!GeneralProfiles.InBuffer myTrace.etl

5. Press ENTER once to start the command, now you will have to wait till your system hangs.
6. Right after your system stops hanging you, press ENTER in command prompt.
7. After waiting some time, a log file myTrace.etl will be produced, compress this to a zip file.
8. Host this compressed file online (on MediaFire etc.).
9. Share the link here, I will try to find a solution to your problem using that.

user79032
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Uninstall Adobe Flash Player.

I'm running windows 7, and had downloaded the 64bit Adobe Flash Player from their website.

soandos
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ghost
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