When Typing There Is a Delay

flipicaneze said:

I have noticed this on both my home (VAIO) and my work (Lenovo) laptops. I type a pathetic 34 WPM and I still get a lag and/or characters are completely missing. The VAIO is a Core i3 and the Lenovo is a Core i5.

One thing they both have in common is integrated graphics. I have a friend who has the same exact Sony VAIO VPC-S with same RAM, only she has the Nvidia graphics and a core i5. It doesn't have any keyboard lag, smooth as a baby's bottom operation.

So my investigation suggests that something is wrong with the Graphics integration on the CPU in the Sandy Bridges. Can everybody agree on this?

FliGi7 said:

None of this sounds hardware related. It just sounds like:

a) Your computer is crapped up with malware
b) It doesn't have enough memory to run all of your applications you have open
c) It has failing memory
d) It needs to be defragmented
e) There is a rogue process running that is consuming way too many resources
f) Some combo of all of the above

What antivirus solution are you running?

Consider the Lenovo was a work laptop from within a highly regulated Pharmaceutical atmosphere. They were using Malwarebytes and McAfee Enterprise. They were tight about everything, they wouldn't even let me install a mouse driver. It was on Windows 7 Professional x32 on 4GB. Keyboard lag was a common problem.

My first reaction was Sony's infamous abuse of bloatware. But I had restored it from fresh and clean Windows 7 disc. It has the Core i3 with 4GB of RAM running Windows 7 X64. All hardware tested and came up with no defect. I have even switched the RAM just to see if that was the problem, but to no avail.

That laptop now sits in the closet and I went back to my VAIO-Z with a Core2Duo, restored in the same fashion, and it runs so much quicker either Nvidia or Intel Graphics modes. Never misses a character while typing.

But my friend has her VAIO-S with Nvidia Graphics, core i5 and 4GB ram. Smooth as silk. All Sony bloatware still present.

Well, McAfee is terrible so don't think it to be impossible that you could have resident malware with McAfee installed. I've seen it happen many times over. The one thing McAfee is good at is slowing down your computer.

Regardless, there is some root cause for the delay in typing. Is it present only when typing in the browser? Or is it also present when typing in Word or other, non-internet connected applications?

FliGi7 said:

Well, McAfee is terrible so don't think it to be impossible that you could have resident malware with McAfee installed. I've seen it happen many times over. The one thing McAfee is good at is slowing down your computer.

Regardless, there is some root cause for the delay in typing. Is it present only when typing in the browser? Or is it also present when typing in Word or other, non-internet connected applications?

Everything. Microsoft Excel, Word..... Internet Explorer and Firefox (even when typing in a forum). Anywhere typing was involved, there was a lag.

My Core2Duo had McAfee from AT&T and still didn't have that kind of issue. Programs seemed to be a tad slower to complete loading, but typing shouldn't be an issue.

When I restore, I am adamant about tuning up, defragging, immunizing, you name it. And this lag started from hello on the Lenovo, restored for me as the new user.

And when you restored the computer using a Windows 7 DVD (not the recovery DVD from Lenovo), did you install the latest drivers from the Lenovo site for your laptop or did you let Windows 7 Updates install them?

FliGi7 said:

And when you restored the computer using a Windows 7 DVD (not the recovery DVD from Lenovo), did you install the latest drivers from the Lenovo site for your laptop or did you let Windows 7 Updates install them?

The Lenovo was a corporate laptop. There was no way I could restore it. They wouldn't even let me install my bluetooth mouse drivers to get the extra buttons functioning, that's how tight they were. It didn't have Lenovo oem logos in the system properties, so Windows 7 Enterprise was from a Disc.

Ok, well it doesn't really matter which laptop we're talking about. The point is that upon a clean install with a Windows 7 disc, you have 2 options for reinstalling drivers. The first option is to download them from the manufacturer's site and the second is to let Windows7 see if it can identify and install the appropriate drivers via Windows Update. Sometimes one method is better than the other, as one or the other can provide drivers that are less suitable and can cause issues. Sometimes trackpad and typing issues are caused and solved by this.

Since you mentioned that it happens when your computer has been on for a while, it definitely sounds like a memory leak. is it just the typing that's slow, or is the whole computer slow? Next time you experience this, check out task manager and see if anything is using a ridiculous amount of memory.

This would happen on my wife's old laptop, if she left a Facebook flash game running for a while, like Farmville. She'd come back to her computer and find it unresponsive. The IE window would be taking up over 1 GB of system memory alone.

DeaconFrost said:

Since you mentioned that it happens when your computer has been on for a while, it definitely sounds like a memory leak. is it just the typing that's slow, or is the whole computer slow? Next time you experience this, check out task manager and see if anything is using a ridiculous amount of memory.

This would happen on my wife's old laptop, if she left a Facebook flash game running for a while, like Farmville. She'd come back to her computer and find it unresponsive. The IE window would be taking up over 1 GB of system memory alone.

It actually happens from power up. The computers respond, and other than the keyboard issue, the computer runs handy dandy. The typing is not only slow, but in between characters, it would miss a character. Say I would type google, it would come up as gogle.

The only computer I leave on is my desktop that used to fold and download torrents(now it's on out of habit, no real excuses anymore). The Lenovo I was required to take it home every night for security purposes. As for my personal laptops, I never saw the need to even let it go to sleep, just shut down.

I would immediately replaced MucAfee, which no one here recommends and is viewed as an infection, with Microsoft Security Essentials and the Windows firewall.

Stress test your RAM with 5-6 passes or overnight using Memtest86+. Reseat or swap your RAM sticks checking slots for debris.

Work through these troubleshooting steps, in particular achieving a Clean Boot with only your AV starting with Windows - all of the rest are freeloaders which slow your system and can spy on you.