Computer issue

[JPete]

I thought I would pass this by all the computer gurus on this site as you have saved my bacon many times in the past. I have a fairly new ASUS desktop 64 bit computer running Windows 7 and recently have been having an issue with the computer stopping in the middle of a task. I say stopping as opposed to freezing as I get the rotating arrow ikon that looks a little like a buffering ikon. This happens in Explorer, Outlook and other programs as well so I don't think it is a program issue. Also noticed that when copy and pasting photos between folders, if I right click, I get the arrow ikon for about a full minute before the drop down menu shows up. If I go to File-Copy from the header bar, there is no delay. Sometimes in Explorer, the screen will white out for a minute or two and the url bar says Explorer not responding and then it will all of a sudden pick up where it left off and work.

Any ideas would be appreciated.

Pete

 

[John From Detroit]

Modern computers often have several programs that do "Background" stuff, such as checking for updates, virus scanning, and that kind of thing.. .My computer does very much the same thing, it takes a coffee break.. I suspect those programs are the cause.

I am not, However, sure.

In the old days I ran Commodore VIC-20 and 64/128.. The Basic operating system in them would do that to clean up memory from time to time.

I wrote a search routine for a database program.. I added a couple of Benchmark lines to it (It printed the time when it started and finished) and found that when I was done it sorted 150 records in 4.5 hours.  I can tell you that it was an "INSERT" sort..

Imagine a card file. You inspect the first card, if it's lower in value than the 2nd you move it to the 1st position moving the first card back, Now you incpect the 3rd.. If the 100th ins lower than the 1st then you move it to the 1st slot and move the other 149.

The result is a sort that retains the sub order of the prior sort

So if you want to sort on A, then B, then C (Fields) You start by sorting on C.
Then B, then A and your result is like a much priceier program that can do Primary (A) secondary (B) and 3rd level (C) sorting.

 

[Molaker]

As John said, you probably have an application (or several) running in the background gobbling up CPU time.  First, I recommend you do a full scan with a good anti-virus app as you could have a virus working.  Second, defrag your HDD.  Then look at what apps are loaded when your system starts up.  Info here on how to do this.

 

[Ned]

When this happens, press Ctl-Alt-Del and start the Task Manager.  Click on the CPU column header and that will put the heaviest CPU user processes at the top of the list.  This will tell you if you have a CPU hog running.  That symptom is also indicative of Adobe Flash running the browser and having problems accessing a host that is serving a Flash object.  If this is the problem, it will only show up when you're running your browser (Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome, etc.) and have a tab open to a page with a Flash object in it.

 

[eliallen]

System Restore may work, depends on when the computer started acting up.

 

[Ned]

System restore is a last resort once you have determined that the problem can't be solved any other way.  I would also suggest doing a thorough virus scan with something like MalwareBytes scanner, as Tom suggested.

 

[eliallen]

System restore is a last resort

I use to think that too, but not any more. 

 

[JPete]

Thanks guys. I will check out your suggestions. I don't know if this helps but the right click drop down menu delay is very consistant. A real pain in the --- when I am trying to move pictures between folders.

Pete

 

[tnthub]

Without actually diagnosing the problem there are some things that can be tweaked, and before I suggest doing any of these things I will say that I always perform a backup before making any changes, regardless of whether or not the last two hundred times I have done something and it has worked fine.  Always make a backup first.

Ok...  Here are some things to check for and do as common sense and feedback from others warrant.

If you go into control panel, device manager, hard drive, see if caching is enabled.  Many default build do not have write caching enabled and many consumer level computers have slower hard drives (5400 rpm with small caches).

You can clean out your old restore points.  Many default settings allow up to 10 gig of restore points to be saved so you can clean out the old ones (except your most recent few) which may save some indexing time.

Ccleaner is a reasonably good and free program to clean out temporary internet files.  Read through the check boxes to keep cookies you want and then clear out a lot of junk files.

After running Ccleaner, run defraggler (download from the same place as Ccleaner).  Do not replace the Windows defragmenter when you run the installation.

You can create a permanent swap file in your system advanced options and make it static instead of dynamic.  This will speed up any tasks which use the swap file and...  defraggler has an option to defragment the swap file once you create it.

Go to the start, run box and type msconfig.  There are probably many programs running by default that do not need to be running all the time.

Your anti-virus software is probably scanning "everything" all the time.  There may be specific exclusions that should be configured for maximum performance and those excluded files can be scanned at night when the computer is otherwise idle.

You can also download and install malwarebytes and run a quick scan to verify there are not any rogue programs running that are a problem.  When you click on the malwarebytes icon to open the program select "run as administrator" and always check for updates before running a scan.