bad lag problems when doing more than one thing

I have this issue where I get a lag problem when I am doing more than one thing at a time, for example, if I am on Facebook on one monitor and trying to watch a movie or an avi at the same time on the other monitor I get bad lag, like a very quick pause, some times even a full freeze for up to a minute. I am using Windows 7 64 bit but went back to Vista 64 bit the other to test and had the same problem there. The browser is Firefox (tried in safe mode which made a bit of difference but didn't fix it) Any help would be appreciated Intel Core 2 Duo E6850 CPU 2 x 2 GB Kits Kingston Hyper memory 1066MHz MSI P35 Platinum Combo Creative X-Fi Titanium Pro Soundcard Geforce GTX 285 Video card Thermaltake 1000W Toughpower PSU Compro T750 HDTV Dual Tuner PCI Card Thermaltake Bigwater 745 water cooling 2 x Acer 233H 23" Monitors Logitech G5 2007 Mouse Logitech G5 rev2 Keyboard

Is the processor utilisation plateauing at some very high value during your "lag" spikes? (Task Manager, performance tab)

If so, which process is responsible? (TM, processes tab, sort by CPU column)

the highest processes are CTAudSvc.exe which fluctuates to about 24% then Firefox which goes as high as 50% quite often. Deferred Procedure Calls nevers goes above 5%, the only other thing is DisplayFusion which uses up to 7%

CTAudSvc.exe Would be one of Creative's....My gut tells me to look there.

It is a Creative one but can't be disabled, tried it and lost sound lol

belveder said:

It is a Creative one but can't be disabled, tried it and lost sound lol

Try to download updates for the Creative drivers and apps on your machine (from Creative!).

I am very stringent on keeping up to date with drivers so I know they are up to date, this is only a recent problem, the only change I have made is buying the 2 Acer monitors.

Firefox using 50% of a Core2Duo? Something's not right. Unless it is very brief, then alright.

no it is most of the time

here are the extensions I use

- Adblock Plus 1.1.1
- Adblock Plus: Element Hiding Helper 1.0.6
- Add Bookmark Here ² 3.5.20090621
- Better Gmail 2 0.9.5
- ColorfulTabs 3.9.4
- CookieCuller 1.3.1
- Custom Download Manager 2.5b91016
- CustomizeGoogle 0.76
- CuteMenus - Crystal SVG 1.9.3
- Download status 1.2
- DownloadHelper 4.6.4
- Gmail Notifier 0.6.4.
- GooglePreview 3.22
- IDM CC 6.7
- Image Zoom 0.3.1
- Microsoft .NET Framework Assistant 1.1
- More Tools Menu 1.2.1
- MR Tech Toolkit 6.0.3.4
- Net Usage Item 1.2.236.1
- NoScript 1.9.9.11
- NoSquint 2.0
- PDF Download 3.0.0.1
- QuickNote 0.6.0.4
- Screengrab 0.96.2
- Smiley Xtra 5.0.2
- StumbleUpon 3.38
- Tab Mix Plus 0.3.8.2
- TVU Web Player 2,4,8,2
- Yahoo! Mail Notifier 1.0.0.19
- Yontoo Layers 1.03.01


Installed Plugins: (9)
- Java Deployment Toolkit 6.0.150.3
- Java(TM) Platform SE 6 U15
- Mozilla Default Plug-in
- RealPlayer Version Plugin
- RealPlayer(tm) G2 LiveConnect-Enabled Plug-In (32-bit)
- Shockwave Flash
- Shockwave for Director
- TVU Web Player for FireFox
- VLC Multimedia Plug-in

Well, test out how your system is when FF is running with no plugins. To do that, start it in safe mode.

Start menu search box, copy and paste the following, hit enter.

Firefox -safe-mode

Then check the box to disable all addons.