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Hey guys,

So I have a pc I built back in 2016 that started giving me a weird problem about 1-2 weeks ago and I haven't been able to figure it out. It tends to randomly "stutter" no matter what i am doing. So for example, if I have a video/music track playing (doesn't matter if its online or from one of my connected harddrives) my mouse cursor will freeze and the audio will cut out but only for a split second and it does it seemingly randomly. I'm not getting any long freezes, random resets, weird beeps, or blue screens, just these weird split second "stutters".

So far these are the things I've tried to do to fix the issue but non have worked:

  • Both install/uninstall any recent windows updates
  • Double checked all my drivers and updated them if I had to
  • Flashed my bios with the most recent update
  • Did a clean reinstalled of my operating system
  • Ran benchmark/stress tests on my cpu to see if it might be failing or overheating (multiple programs say my cpu is working properly and I had open HW monitor to make sure my temps were ok during said tests)
  • Physically took apart my pc and cleaned/dusted EVERYTHING and also reapplied fresh thermal paste to the cpu
  • Used multiple softwares to test the health of my NVMe SSD that the operating system is on to see it that might be failing( I don't know how accurate it can be considering its an SSD but everything came out fine)
  • Removed any dongles I had connected to the pc
  • Adjusted my power settings for all my other connected drives and also made sure all the drives are optimized

The only thing I haven't tried is putting the OS onto a different drive which I'm planning to do today. Just wanted to see if anybody has any other input or ideas worth trying before I do that.

Also, i have 2 other SSDs and 3 HDD plugged in my pc that i use strictly for the storage of my personal data. I dont have any OS or software programs running on those drives, but is it possible if one of those drives is faulty or going bad it would cause the rest of the pc to stutter? Again even if im surfing the web I get these stutters, so that wouldn' really make sense to me but maybe I'm wrong?

In terms of specs I have:

i7 6700k 32gigs of ram 256 NVMe SSD that the OS and applications are on GTX 970 graphics card

The most demanding things I do nowadays on this pc is run Cura for 3d printing files or a drone simulator to practice flying drones but thats pretty much it.

I've searched online for hours to find a solution but haven't found anything, so any help or input would be much appreciated!

Hey guys, So I have a pc I built back in 2016 that started giving me a weird problem about 1-2 weeks ago and I haven't been able to figure it out. It tends to randomly "stutter" no matter what i am doing. So for example, if I have a video/music track playing (doesn't matter if its online or from one of my connected harddrives) my mouse cursor will freeze and the audio will cut out but only for a split second and it does it seemingly randomly. I'm not getting any long freezes, random resets, weird beeps, or blue screens, just these weird split second "stutters". So far these are the things I've tried to do to fix the issue but non have worked: * Both install/uninstall any recent windows updates * Double checked all my drivers and updated them if I had to * Flashed my bios with the most recent update * Did a clean reinstalled of my operating system * Ran benchmark/stress tests on my cpu to see if it might be failing or overheating (multiple programs say my cpu is working properly and I had open HW monitor to make sure my temps were ok during said tests) * Physically took apart my pc and cleaned/dusted EVERYTHING and also reapplied fresh thermal paste to the cpu * Used multiple softwares to test the health of my NVMe SSD that the operating system is on to see it that might be failing( I don't know how accurate it can be considering its an SSD but everything came out fine) * Removed any dongles I had connected to the pc * Adjusted my power settings for all my other connected drives and also made sure all the drives are optimized The only thing I haven't tried is putting the OS onto a different drive which I'm planning to do today. Just wanted to see if anybody has any other input or ideas worth trying before I do that. Also, i have 2 other SSDs and 3 HDD plugged in my pc that i use strictly for the storage of my personal data. I dont have any OS or software programs running on those drives, but is it possible if one of those drives is faulty or going bad it would cause the rest of the pc to stutter? Again even if im surfing the web I get these stutters, so that wouldn' really make sense to me but maybe I'm wrong? In terms of specs I have: i7 6700k 32gigs of ram 256 NVMe SSD that the OS and applications are on GTX 970 graphics card The most demanding things I do nowadays on this pc is run Cura for 3d printing files or a drone simulator to practice flying drones but thats pretty much it. I've searched online for hours to find a solution but haven't found anything, so any help or input would be much appreciated!

(post is archived)

[–] [deleted] • 3 pts

What you're describing is often called 'hitching'. Try downloading a Linux Live image that you can dump to a USB key or CDROM and try booting and running that OS and see if the hitching continues. Now, it probably won't have all the accelerated drivers you're running in Windows, but that could help determine if it's a basic hard issue (like memory or something like that) or a software issue, like an app or driver in windows.

[–] • 3 pts

This might not be helpful, but I've had issues like this before where troubleshooting the problem didn't lead to any positive results. In those cases I simply formatted and reinstalled the OS to fix the issue.

Some people might consider that an extreme solution, but in reality most personal PC's should be formatted every so often, just backup anything important on an external drive or something.

[–] • 0 pt

I actually did this last night. I pulled the data I wanted to keep and wiped the drive and did a fresh install. Was hoping that it would do the trick since it's been a while that I've done this but unfortunately the problem persisted even with a fresh OS install

[–] • 2 pts

Shame you don't have integrated graphics. I'd say try running it with a different GPU for a bit and see what happens.

[–] [deleted] • 2 pts (edited )

Could be an early sign of SSD failure. This also happened to me, albeit on a mac, so trying the other disk may help.

[–] [deleted] • 1 pt

Mouse freezing like that is either a hardware or a driver problem. I suspect hardware.

Check your hardware for bad caps. Mainly the PSU and the motherboard. Catalytic capacitors should have flat tops. If they are bulging even a little, or have dried liquid on top, even a little bit, they are busted.

[–] • 1 pt

Catalytic

Electrolytic?

The capacitor plague is mostly behind us, but there could still have been some out there in 2016.

[–] • 0 pt

I took a close look at all my caps and didn't find any that looked damaged or leaking, although I do still suspect it could be the motherboard. Still trying out a few ideas from the other comments and I'm going to borrow some parts tomorrow. So I'll hopefully have a solution by the end of the weekend

[–] • 1 pt

Might also check your power supply voltages. Try a different wall outlet, preferably on a circuit that doesn't have any other power hungry devices plugged into it.

[–] • 1 pt

Well, looks like you've covered most of the basics.

Systems can hang like that when they are awaiting data. If there is a bottle neck somewhere, or a delay - network packets, etc, that can create the symptoms you've described.

What I would do next is fire up the task manager and the resource monitor, and monitor what all of the software is doing behind the scenes. Watch for programs using up resources, or where the system is busy. What is it doing exactly when the glitches occur?

In my experience, it is often either windows, or some third party program, that is hogging resources behind the scenes.

If you can spot it in the act, then you can either remove the program, or alternatively, change it's priority, to change how the resources are being used. For example, my windows system likes to catalog and prioritize all of the files I am using so as to boot the system faster. Indexing - which does boot the system faster, however, the process of indexing is constantly hogging resources which interferes in overall performance.

So - what to do about it? I could lower the priority, to slow the indexing and reduce it's resource usage at any given time, or I could increase it's priority to get the indexing task finished faster, then releasing those resources. Currently I am going with the increased priority, which seems to work better.

Check for maintenance software - especially anti malware or anti virus software, running scans in the background.

Windows loves to scan files like I don't need the resources or something.

Monitor the network traffic too - the problem could be external - delays in network traffic - keep an eye on packet loss and packet latency, or third party programs using the network behind the scenes - maybe someone else using your bandwidth - that sort of thing. Anything that causes the system to wait for data.

[–] • 1 pt

Have you run a memory stress test?

That seems to be the missing item in your initial list above.

get memtest on a boot device and run it do the full suite. Yes it takes a while and is a PITA because of it.

[–] • 0 pt

I was almost certain the Ram was going to be the issue, because you're right it's the one thing I didn't check, but so far memtest hasn't given me any errors. I did the test 2 sticks at a time as well. First 2 sticks checked out and it looks like the next 2 are about to as well. Thanks for the input tho, didn't know about memtest until you mentioned it so at least I have it for future reference

[–] • 1 pt

Seemed to be the first easy punch in what you had not looked at.

Next thing I would try... even if you arent familiar its easy to do.

boot with a linux disk, use it in the same ways, cura runs on it, web browsers, and all those internet things. see if the problem occurs there. While I understand it wouldnt solve the problem if it doesnt occur. It would narrow it down more to software than to hardware.

[–] • 1 pt

For sure. I'm going to take this as an opportunity to start learning Linux. Been wanting to migrate over to it for quite some and it seems like there are a decent amount of people on here who know their way around it

[–] • 1 pt (edited )

check the event logs, stuff to worry about will be listed as critical monitor the active processes: %cpu_load/%memory_load during these events, sort by highest to see what's busy

reseat ram and run a stress test on them, try using one at a time. my last glitch was down to the 2nd pair of 16Gb DIMMS, maybe it was the wrong overclock settings in BIOS, I haven't bothered looking, I just took them out and ran with 16Gb

It could be the hard drive, seems unlikely with a SSD though, GPU's and especially drivers can be glitchy, if you have an old one lying around then try using that for a few days

[–] • 1 pt

right on, I'll give those a shot, thanks!

[–] • 1 pt

I suspect a problem with the motherboard.

[–] • 0 pt

I'm starting to lean towards this, although I did closely inspect all the capacitors on the mobo and didn't find any that looked damaged/leaking. Gonna borrow a friend's PC tomorrow to swap some parts to narrow it down more tho

[–] • 1 pt

Did you run task manager to see if there is anything at 100% hdd cpu mem? Also look there for a process that’s hogging resources.

[–] • 1 pt

I sure did but I didn't find anything that's taking up my resources. Currently running memtest again on my other 2 sticks of ram and so far everything is checking out.

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