Windows 7: Glitchy OS

Hey guys,

So I'm running Windows 7 and I'm completely stumped as to why my computer would be glitching.
It boots up fast enough, but that's about the end of the positives. If I try and run iTunes and Chrome my music will glitch every couple of seconds, and my cursor will jolt in tandem. This just goes on and on. So I tried a different media player, enter Media Player Classic, thought it a good choice seeing as it's such small program, yet same problem occurs. I finally tried just running iTunes without Chome or any other program running, and it still glitches. All the while CPU usage won't go over 15%, no spikes of any kind.

I don't recall this always happening though, had 7 since January and this hasn't been happening since a month or so back. I can't think of any software or hardware change that I've implemented.

Hope someone can help me out here.



Thanks in advance,

Ed

Sounds like a performance problem reading from the HD. Do you notice the problem when not playing music?

Did you recently update / switch / install a security program?

test your memory using memtest86 for 5-6 passes, or overnight to stress test. Reseat memory, swap sticks.

Test your HD using maker's full CD HD diagnostic/repair scan.

Use a lightweight AV that doesn't take over and bloat out Windows 7, like free MS Security Essentials.

Check your Event Viewer>Admin View to google repeat errors for solution.

since you are having trouble when playing music and you have multiple HDD/SSD I recommend also testing your drives with Seatools I think you should do the quick tests on all and the long tests on the drive with all you music on it. The test might not work for SSD.

EDIT: missed the part where greg mentioned testing HDD already. Usually the manufactures test will at least give you an error code.

Hey, thanks for the replies guys. Can someone confirm with me that this (SAMSUNG Hard Disk Drive - support - utilities) is the right utility for my Samsung hard drive? Also, it says I need to use a floppy drive, but I have no floppy hard drive on my computer. Any alternatives to this?
I already use a lightweight AV, I use Panda Cloud Antivirus.
Will run memtest86 now and see if anything happens. Can I still use it even if I run x64 Windows?
Also, thanks for telling me about that Event Viewer, it's packed with Warnings and Errors :P I shall look through it and post any I don't understand.

EDIT: Just looking at the Event Viewer, and no new Warnings/Errors appear when the music glitches.

Further Update
I've run memtest86 for 5 passes, took ~3hours. Came up with zero errors.
I've also run SeaTools, short on all hard drives, then long on my one with music. Still zero errors.
I've also determined that it does these little freezes without a media player running; my mouse will freeze for a fraction of a second from as soon as a few seconds after start-up. I tried playing a movie on my main(Samsung 1TB) hard drive, it became glitchy, so I tried it on SSD, and on backup(WD). Movie was glitchy on both. I then tried it on an external hard drive connected via USB2 port(pci card), was glitchy also on that.

So it seems my hard drives and memory are fine, and that my computer glitches when it's not even doing anything...

Quite a puzzler :P

Thanks for any more advice you have.

mm, wonder if it does this on another OS.

Open Event Viewer. Go to the start menu and type "Event Viewer" in the search bar. Look in all the tabs under Windows Logs for any red X's. That might tell you something.

EDIT: If you have 64bit windows and use the Live Essentials package, you may see some caused by Live Phote Gallery or Movie Maker. Those can be ignored according to a article released by Microsoft.

You might try and clear the board by shutting down, unplugging the PSU, push the power button to drain all power, then reboot and see if that changes anything.

If that fails you might want to clear the cmos and see if the problem persists or not.

Ok, so I've cleared the CMOS, it still happens, but it doesn't seem as bad. That may be because I'm not doing much on my computer, does that mean it's cpu/ram related?

Which OS do you suggest I try? I have a copy of xp somewhere, should I go for 32 or 64?