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Need some help diagnosing a problem

post #1 of 6
5/7/04 at 10:55pm
Thread Starter 
My wife's desktop has recently started acting strange. The mouse stutters in its movements, and the programs seem to momentarily hang from time to time. I have all the latest drivers and updates. I always run Norton anti-virus, Spybot search etc. There is no defragmentation and virus scans show nothing. I even cleaned out any dust from the fans etc. Any ideas? Could the video card be going? BTW running Windows XP home. TIA
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post #2 of 6
5/7/04 at 11:40pm
i had a similar problem after doing some of the windows updates after i had received my laptop. if you have automatic updates active, i would disable it and only do the critical updates manually. try doing a system restore to a time when you know you were not having the problem. if that does not work, you may have to do a re-install.

good luck,

steve
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post #3 of 6
5/8/04 at 12:25pm
Thread Starter 
The automatic update has been turned off since I installed XP, as I prefer to do my updates manually. I tried to restore the system, however it was not able to, since there have been no configuration changes for over 30 days.

Since this is my wife's computer, only her and the kids use it. She says that she noticed the problem starting about a week ago or a little longer. There has been nothing added or changed during that time or prior.

I did notice that when the mouse hezitates, the sound does as well. Also, games like half-life etc, which used to play with out problems, suddenly are unplayable due to bad lagging. The colors in the game are also not correct. Everything being equal, I'm not sure what could be causing the problem. Any help or other ideas would be welcomed. The system is about 4 years old including the video card. HELP!
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post #4 of 6
5/8/04 at 2:45pm
Given the age, its certainly a possibility with a component going bad. But the fact its a system-wide problem (audio, video, mouse, etc) it would have to be a basic component. I suppose it could be the video card, especially if its one that handles both video and audio in games. Any chance you can get a replacement video card to swap out and see if that solves the problem or at least changes it. That would at least narrow down the field.

What it really sounds like is a virus or some other sort of malware has snuck in. Try looking in Task Manager for something running that shouldn't be there. Then try running one of the registry scans.

I assume your anti- software is all up to date, but have to mention it as a matter of protocol. Sometimes the most intractable problems are so intractable simply because we've ignored the obvious because its too obvious.

Do let us know what it turns out to be.
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post #5 of 6
5/8/04 at 2:55pm
Thread Starter 
Marquidarquis,

My first thought was a virus. I did check the task manager first thing and everything is correct. As I said, I keep all my antivirus, Spybot etc. up to date and have even run a full system scan twice; once with the my Norton antivirus and once with the online Symantec scan. Both found nothing. I do keep my registry clean with Ace Utilites. Thanks for the input.

I don't know anyone who can lend me a video card. I may try buying one to check it out. This problem really has me stumped.
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post #6 of 6
5/8/04 at 3:24pm
try removing the indexing service. iirc, you can do this through 'add or remove programs' in the control panel.
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