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Weird "hiccups" evrery 2-3 seconds

post #1 of 47
1/9/07 at 4:10pm
Thread Starter 
The Behavior: Every few seconds, there's a brief "pause" going on. This is noticeable when watching a video clip or playing a music file. This pause looks similar to the brief pause I get when I switch on/off the wireless.

The System: Really old Dell i600m, with banias 1.6ghz, 1.25ghz RAM, Radeon 9000 64MB, and 60GB HDD.

What I tried: I did chkdsk, virus scan, adware removal, registry fix, turning off anything that connects to the web, etc.

This did not happen until yesterday. What I installed/did since was: install apache, install logmein, disk cleanup (meaning I don't really have a reliable system restore to go back to).

I use Dell's provide driver for M9. Switching to Omega Driver didn't fix the problem.

Any suggestion would be great.
Thanks.
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post #2 of 47
1/9/07 at 4:59pm
Thread Starter 
well... it's gone
don't know how/why but.. it's gone
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post #3 of 47
1/9/07 at 5:02pm
Nice work!
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post #4 of 47
1/9/07 at 5:56pm
Thread Starter 
not fixed sitll weird
music seems to be ok now though, for some reason. I don't hear intermittent breaks anymore
however when i ran dxdiag's directdraw test, the square moving in the V path gets that hiccup every few seconds
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post #5 of 47
1/9/07 at 6:05pm
Was your machine working normally before the installations yesterday? If so, I'd uninstall one at a time and see if things go back to normal.
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post #6 of 47
1/9/07 at 6:21pm
Thread Starter 
Yeah I tried that but doesn't fix the problem
What's the most effective way to completely reinstall radeon driver?
I think that's one big possibility
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post #7 of 47
1/9/07 at 6:56pm
Instructions. Click on "Radeon."
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post #8 of 47
1/9/07 at 6:56pm
Thread Starter 
apparently, it's not the display driver...
I used drivercleaner to completely wipeout the dirver and reinstalled with something else (dhzeropoint)
and sitll the same.
This happens even if I am completely disconnected from the internet
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post #9 of 47
1/10/07 at 12:16am
Id say its one of those programs that twaked something that it shouldnt have. Is there no way you can restore back to an earliar setting? You mention that you have no safe spot to return to so could you further elaborate? Im positive this issue is not videocard related but software.
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post #10 of 47
1/10/07 at 12:36am
What about speedstep settings (or equivalent)? I can't count the number of times weird intermittent slowness turned out to be my @%#@ speedstep being too helpful and prematurely slowing the processor way down.
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post #11 of 47
1/10/07 at 2:54am
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by DELL-Machina
Id say its one of those programs that twaked something that it shouldnt have. Is there no way you can restore back to an earliar setting? You mention that you have no safe spot to return to so could you further elaborate? Im positive this issue is not videocard related but software.

I cleaned up my hdd and in the process, I deleted old restore points, thinking stuff like this would not happen (boy was I wrong)

Even a few points that are left don't work for some reason.
It keeps on saying the restoration is incomplete.
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post #12 of 47
1/10/07 at 2:55am
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by galahad05
What about speedstep settings (or equivalent)? I can't count the number of times weird intermittent slowness turned out to be my @%#@ speedstep being too helpful and prematurely slowing the processor way down.

nope, not it
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post #13 of 47
1/10/07 at 2:57am
Thread Starter 
after swtiching to a variety of gfx drivers, I think I actually managed to make it worse.
After installing and uninstalling dhzeropoint driver, the video expansion feature won't work in windows (like, huge useless black area when not in native resolution)
i need to hold on to this laptop until a decent santa rosa tablet comes out... and that'll be like q3
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post #14 of 47
1/10/07 at 3:39am
Wait...one thing you can check: well two.

1) I've seen Windows XP (and earlier Windows OSes) just, out of the blue, reset the I/O mode it uses for hardware such as DVD and hard drives--going from some Ultra DMA mode to PIO. Killing the cpu's performance and causing ugly, intermittent slowdowns. This has happened more than once.
Check for that. If this is the cause, the fix is pretty simple (you know the drill: "uninstall" the hardware, reboot, let the OS "rediscover" the "new" hardware).

2) While you're there, check for IRQ conflicts between your video card and, well, anything else. I've see IRQ autosteering go nuts in XP/98/95 causing, again, intermittent slowdowns (in one case, every time I moved my damn mouse).
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post #15 of 47
1/10/07 at 3:42am
Quote:
Originally Posted by galahad05
1) I've seen Windows XP (and earlier Windows OSes) just, out of the blue, reset the I/O mode it uses for hardware such as DVD and hard drives--going from some Ultra DMA mode to PIO. Killing the cpu's performance and causing ugly, intermittent slowdowns. Check for that.
Windows does that after a certain number of disk read errors when reading from the optical drive. It sometimes causes the drive to stop working completely, which makes me wonder what the purpose of this feature could be...
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post #16 of 47
1/10/07 at 3:44am
Hmmm. Good to know--I've always wondered why this happened.

Wait, this gives me an idea: you (Orig. poster) could check your event viewer in your "administrative tools" section of the control panel to see if the OS has detected anything weird.
It's helped me before.
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post #17 of 47
1/10/07 at 4:12am
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by galahad05
Wait...one thing you can check: well two.

1) I've seen Windows XP (and earlier Windows OSes) just, out of the blue, reset the I/O mode it uses for hardware such as DVD and hard drives--going from some Ultra DMA mode to PIO. Killing the cpu's performance and causing ugly, intermittent slowdowns. This has happened more than once.
Check for that. If this is the cause, the fix is pretty simple (you know the drill: "uninstall" the hardware, reboot, let the OS "rediscover" the "new" hardware).
nope, not it.
I'm familiar with this situation though

Quote:
2) While you're there, check for IRQ conflicts between your video card and, well, anything else. I've see IRQ autosteering go nuts in XP/98/95 causing, again, intermittent slowdowns (in one case, every time I moved my damn mouse).
this one is interesting.
while in properties it says there aren't any conflicts, I've noticed that my ethernet controller and display adapter have the same irq
but this isn't something i can change.
could this still be the culprit?
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post #18 of 47
1/10/07 at 4:22am
Video cards are supposed to be able to share IRQs...but I've seen some have problems with it--both Nvidia and ATI cards can have this problem. And, here's the kicker: it's been stated before (can search via google "video card irq sharing") that the Big Three of don't-dare-to-share are the video card, sound card, and the Ethernet NIC.

Check your BIOS settings, and see if you can play with things there. Also you can try the "uninstall"/"reinstall" method I mentioned before--for the NIC and/or the video card. Hopefully the OS would pick different IRQs than before.

Also, I believe that there's a way to semi-manually force irq selections in the OS--I'll have to look it up again.

EDIT: You might be able to do the same thing by updating to the latest and greatest sound drivers--I presume you're using the onboard AC97 sound? You should be able to updated drivers for this (usually from Dell's downloads section).
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post #19 of 47
1/10/07 at 12:45pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by galahad05
Hmmm. Good to know--I've always wondered why this happened.

Wait, this gives me an idea: you (Orig. poster) could check your event viewer in your "administrative tools" section of the control panel to see if the OS has detected anything weird.
It's helped me before.

too many errors =0
I don't think I can figure it out like that unless I sit down and read everything, which probably will be slower than just formatting
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post #20 of 47
1/10/07 at 1:14pm
One thing you can try--to test out the IRQ=cause of your problem theory: temporarily disable your NIC (from your system properties), and see if the slowdown goes away.
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