Calling the Geeks

[Victor Meldrew]

Looking for a computer Guru to give me a bit of advice...

Laptop is starting to do wierd things.

When it is playing music on media player, it stalls(clicks) or plays slowly. It is slow to open applications.

This started happening a few days ago. i have run a virus sweep, nothing. Done a scandisk check, nothing.

First thought was one of the automatic updates has caused a conflict so I have removed all the recent ones but no change...

Kind of getting hacked off at it. Its only a few months old.

Is it worth getting the Norton systemworks package that does the windows checking or is there a better package/option out there..?

Any SE'rs able to have a look at it for me... ? (give me time to get all the "specialist" pictures and videos removed first)

[robin]

[I am assuming the music files are on your hard disk, not the internet]

Run task manager (press ctrl-shift-esc) click on the processes tab and then click on the CPU column (you might need to click it twice) until the process at the top of the list has the biggest number in the CPU column.

Now, when you are doing sweet FA (no programs running, not playing music, etc.) the "System Idle Process" should be up there with more than 95% of the CPU, followed by taskmger.exe with a few %.

If you have anything else in there using significant % of the CPU then there is something untoward going on - what's the process name and how much CPU does it us on average?

If not, start up your music or media player, playing a typical file. You should see it appear in the task manager (if you use windows media player it's wmplayer.exe) using some CPU.

How much CPU is it using?

Assuming it's less than 90 and the music is still stalling and skipping what other processes have a greater than 2% CPU usage?

By the way, you could "fix" this by right clicking on the media player name in the process list, choose "Set priority" and set to one of the higher priorities. This will now let the media player use as much CPU as it needs to work, *but* it clearly doesn't fix the problem as such.

Cheers,
Robin

[Sanjøy]

Check for spyware using Adaware
http://www.lavasoftusa.com/software/adaware/

Hve a look at what tasks are runnign and wht they do
http://www.neuber.com/taskmanager/

[Victor Meldrew]

I have dowloaded and installed the software. Small improvement but still not fixed...

I still have to connect and register and get all the updates etc, cant connect dirtectly from work... managed to download to a portable drive and install on laptop from that.

Cant register until I get home either...


Anyway, Thanks very much for the help so far. i am confident that if it is a software issue these programs look like they can fix it...

Still a nagging doubt about hardware though... is there a free download program that I can run to check if all my memory if good?

[ironside]

Still a nagging doubt about hardware though... is there a free download program that I can run to check if all my memory if good?

http://www.memtest86.com

Simon

[robin]

Still a nagging doubt about hardware though... is there a free download program that I can run to check if all my memory if good?

There is one potential issue with laptops - they use complicated cooling systems and reduce the CPU speed both for battery life and thermal management. What might be happening to you is either the heatsink has become disconnected from the CPU (happened to me) and/or the fins of the heatsink are full of dust which means they won't cool properly (also happened to me).

Might be worth whipping off the heatsink cover and taking a wee look ...

Cheers,
Robin

[Sanjøy]

Worht noting have you gone to http://www.windowsupdate.com and got EVERYTHING ?

In the good ol days NT boxes slowing down etc just service pack the feckers.

[Victor Meldrew]

Thanks everyone for the advice. I have exhausted what I can try for now without internet access. I will have a go again when I get home, so you may see this thread back up at the top again.

Fingers grossed.

p.s. Bill Gates is a B"£$%^&d