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.