stuttering in games. (mainly valve)

mainly valve cause thats all i really play. ok well ive had this problem before and i had fixed it, came down to it being my caviar green 1tb drive, then went out and got a caviar black 1tb, and that had fixed it for a while. now its sort of back. this time it happens once in a blue moon. and does it weirder than ever. this might end up being a long read but i want to get this out of my life once and for all.

Well before i changed drives i have done multiple testing when i had the caviar green in, and i tryed disabling both my sound cards (on board, and regular sound card), my nvidia drivers were up to date. uninstalled my virus protection. then when i got my new drive i reformatted and everything was working fine (went with older drivers on my nvidia card cause people were complaining about the 19x drivers) but seem to go weird on me again when i installed my ant virus again, which is nod32 smart security 4 (only using the trial for now) haven't uninstalled it again im trying to get it stutter constantly so maybe i can uninstall it and see. but this time it had done it while i was watching 1 of my shows the whole video froze while the sound was still going then came back, that never happen on when it was doing it to me before my reformat and my old drive.
also once in tf2 it also had froze like that, where thee audio was still going but the video was stuck. but its main problem is that it freezes for a sec and the audio loops for a sec, only thing is its not constant like it used to be. It used to be once every 10 to 15 mins and the micro stutter would last for no more than a second. now this happens every hour or more or just randomly. i am now wondering if it is my externals cause sometimes they get accessed out of no where, but then i did my own testing while i was in game un plugging both of them and then plugging them back in. next thing im going to try is if it happens again or when it happens again uninstalling nod32, maybe that is accessing something while im in game and making something spin up, or waking all 3 drives up at the same time (since i still have my caviar green 1tb installed but now used as storage)

Im really stumpt and this thing is so annoying i cant even enjoy a game, instead im really focused on the screen waiting for it to stutter and trying to notice things around me. my temps are fine as to when it used to happen i would alt tab and have cpu z open and check to see if anything was over heated.

also to wondering if this could be a problem in tf2 i get close to 300 frames, but on some maps like the mid area it will drop to as low as 80 i was wondering if that giant of a drop would have any effect.

im just hoping its some sort of driver issue and not hardware, i have not updated my bios as to last time i thought that what may have caused the problem. im just running out of ideas people. I love windows 7 to much and im willing to stick it out of this is a problem and just wait for an update, but what is killing me that is it might not be an update it might be hardware. thank you for your time and sorry for the long read

it make me feel a tid bit better if we can single out the cpu and say that's not it. this pc is no more than a week or 2 old that's what boggles me, my old rig was perfect but then again it was on xp.

running windows 7 pro x64 specs are in my profile for my pc.




update!

from pages 8 and on can be fairly useful

this thread

"lag" in online games with Windows 7

could fix your issue


other things like disabling or unstalling your anti virus and turning off multicore into tf2 can stop this stuttering (maybe)

The rest of last night it didnt stutter at all, but it almost looked like it wanted to, now im wondering is 7 doing something in the background while im gaming that is accessing random things?

nothing at all?? i gues it must be a hardware problem.

sotorious said:

then when i got my new drive i reformatted and everything was working fine (went with older drivers on my nvidia card cause people were complaining about the 19x drivers) but seem to go weird on me again when i installed my ant virus again, which is nod32 smart security 4 (only using the trial for now) haven't uninstalled it again im trying to get it stutter constantly so maybe i can uninstall it and see.

Click to expand...

Have you tried disabling the resident scanner?

sotorious said:

The rest of last night it didnt stutter at all, but it almost looked like it wanted to, now im wondering is 7 doing something in the background while im gaming that is accessing random things?

Click to expand...

It also could be background services like the searchfilterhost.exe, tashost.exe etc.

Although they do cause a little slowdown occasionally, they've never impacted on me to such a degree.

How much data is on the other drives? ie A lot, little etc

Does the problem persist if you leave the drives unplugged?

smarteyeball said:

sotorious said:

then when i got my new drive i reformatted and everything was working fine (went with older drivers on my nvidia card cause people were complaining about the 19x drivers) but seem to go weird on me again when i installed my ant virus again, which is nod32 smart security 4 (only using the trial for now) haven't uninstalled it again im trying to get it stutter constantly so maybe i can uninstall it and see.

Click to expand...

Have you tried disabling the resident scanner?

sotorious said:

The rest of last night it didnt stutter at all, but it almost looked like it wanted to, now im wondering is 7 doing something in the background while im gaming that is accessing random things?

Click to expand...

It also could be background services like the searchfilterhost.exe, tashost.exe etc.

Although they do cause a little slowdown occasionally, they've never impacted on me to such a degree.

How much data is on the other drives? ie A lot, little etc

Does the problem persist if you leave the drives unplugged?

Click to expand...

JUST happened again as we speak as your first question no i haven't disabled residient scanner i don't know how to do that. if you dont mind telling me what it is, and how to disable it, i would greatly appreciate it.

for my 1st drive with windows on it caviar black 1tb using 48gb out of 931 2nd 1 using 80 gb out of 931 (caviar green) 1tb external 460 out of 931 my 500gb external 220 out of 465 so at max to of them are half full. I cant get it to stutter on command like i used to.. so i haven't had them unplugged. what i did do while in game though is unplug them and plug them back in to see if it would stutter me as i was playing, and it didnt really seem to do so, and the stutter happens so fast i cant look at everything to see what is going on at that exact second.

i will rest if im 100 % assured it will be fixed with an update either from steam or windows until then i wont be able to game happy until i figure this problem out..

and as for my gfx cards im using the 186 drivers because i heard the 19x drivers are having problems.

if i may add, my hard drives get accessed randomly so sometimes i think that has something to do with it, idk what it is but they just wake out of nowhere (i say this now cause it just happened while i was sitting here reading other forums trying to find my problem.)

and btw thank you for taking time out of your day for trying to help me..

sotorious said:

JUST happened again as we speak as your first question no i haven't disabled residient scanner i don't know how to do that. if you dont mind telling me what it is, and how to disable it, i would greatly appreciate it.

Click to expand...

The resident scanner is a 'real time scanner' that monitors your system. The sometimes unfortunate side effect is that it can slow your system down. Most A/V apps have them enabled by default.

I haven't used NOD32 personally, but the option should be somewhere in the main menu or settings. Right-click on the icon in the taskbar and have a look through the menu for it.

for my 1st drive with windows on it caviar black 1tb using 48gb out of 931 2nd 1 using 80 gb out of 931 (caviar green) 1tb external 460 out of 931 my 500gb external 220 out of 465 so at max to of them are half full. I cant get it to stutter on command like i used to.. so i haven't had them unplugged. what i did do while in game though is unplug them and plug them back in to see if it would stutter me as i was playing,

Click to expand...

The more data on the drive there is, the longer it takes for the indexer to check/ add files. When you plug a device in, there will be a slight delay as Windows queries the 'new' device and takes the appropriate action.

and as for my gfx cards im using the 186 drivers because i heard the 19x drivers are having problems.

Click to expand...

I don't have an nvidia card, but I believe the really bad driverset was 191.07. Some users are reporting that the latest beta forceware drivers are an improvement. At this stage, it is worth a shot.

x32
http://www.nvidia.com/object/win7_winvista_32bit_195.39_beta.html

x64
http://www.nvidia.com/object/win7_winvista_64bit_195.39_beta.html

if i may add, my hard drives get accessed randomly so sometimes i think that has something to do with it, idk what it is but they just wake out of nowhere

Click to expand...

That is normal as Windows background services are always doing something. Also, inactive hard drives are 'powered down' after 20 mins by default. This can can be changed in the Power Options.

Considering your specs, I strongly suspect it's either the video drivers or NOD32 that's causing the issue and not so much Windows itself.

smarteyeball said:

sotorious said:

JUST happened again as we speak as your first question no i haven't disabled residient scanner i don't know how to do that. if you dont mind telling me what it is, and how to disable it, i would greatly appreciate it.

Click to expand...

The resident scanner is a 'real time scanner' that monitors your system. The sometimes unfortunate side effect is that it can slow your system down. Most A/V apps have them enabled by default.

I haven't used NOD32 personally, but the option should be somewhere in the main menu or settings. Right-click on the icon in the taskbar and have a look through the menu for it.

for my 1st drive with windows on it caviar black 1tb using 48gb out of 931 2nd 1 using 80 gb out of 931 (caviar green) 1tb external 460 out of 931 my 500gb external 220 out of 465 so at max to of them are half full. I cant get it to stutter on command like i used to.. so i haven't had them unplugged. what i did do while in game though is unplug them and plug them back in to see if it would stutter me as i was playing,

Click to expand...

The more data on the drive there is, the longer it takes for the indexer to check/ add files. When you plug a device in, there will be a slight delay as Windows queries the 'new' device and takes the appropriate action.

and as for my gfx cards im using the 186 drivers because i heard the 19x drivers are having problems.

Click to expand...

I don't have an nvidia card, but I believe the really bad driverset was 191.07. Some users are reporting that the latest beta forceware drivers are an improvement. At this stage, it is worth a shot.

x32
NVIDIA DRIVERS 195.39 BETA

x64
NVIDIA DRIVERS 195.39 BETA

if i may add, my hard drives get accessed randomly so sometimes i think that has something to do with it, idk what it is but they just wake out of nowhere

Click to expand...

That is normal as Windows background services are always doing something. Also, inactive hard drives are 'powered down' after 20 mins by default. This can can be changed in the Power Options.

Considering your specs, I strongly suspect it's either the video drivers or NOD32 that's causing the issue and not so much Windows itself.

Click to expand...

I hope so cause for a fact it was the caviar green the first time, just for the fact i would happen so much. i might just all around and uninstall nod32 and as for the drivers im going to give them a shot. just to clear things up can a faulty processor or mother board cause this type of stuttering???

i had also found this


http://s3.photobucket.com/albums/y85/sotorious2000/?action=view&current=nod.png
that ip is the server i was in tf2 last night and around the time it happened.

It's caused by hard drive lag. Something, or some things are reading your drive and causing lag due to read/write latency. My suggestion? Defrag and figure out what programs you have do heavy disc read/write. Which as somebody earlier pointed out AV programs tend to do that if you have RTS (real time scanning) on. My suggestion? If your using a 64bit OS, just scrap the AV for now untill we actually hear of 64bit viruses comming out or 64bit trojans. Though the security of 64bit is by far much greater than 32bit. AV's cause serious lag for many programs, that's why I haven't used one in over 10 years. Though it helps that I also run linux. =) haha

The reason I know this is because some games will do this if you are using the 512MB textures on a video card that doesn't support high res textures. basically you are overworking your hard drive.

[edit] I forgot, try adding ram. That helps the HDD read/write a lot less. but that's a budget decision.

[edit2] well ****, you got enough ram, it's the 1TB hdd. I'm guessing files are split all over and that's one ****ing big platter. DEFRAG and get rid of heavy read/write programs. I always tell people if you are using anything large make a 100+G partition JUST FOR YOUR OS!!! So **** like this doesn't happen. All your programs/OS files ect are on the first sectors of the disc, so latency problems don't get affected by this. I'm guessing you didn't do multiple partitions, just 1TB partition? Heh heh

yea as far as the defragging i have done that multiple times, and im thinking about throwing the AV out the window for now, cause as soon as i thought i had fixed my stuttering it seemed to come back. and it seems around the time i installed the AV... and its almost the same type of stuttering just way less frequent, when i get home tonight that is the first thing im doing, worse that can happen is i get a virus reformat and im on about my day. I JUST HOPE TO GOD!!! that is the problem, its been over 2 weeks that i have been trying to deal with this stuttering issue, and left all my other issues off to the side.

sotorious said:

yea as far as the defragging i have done that multiple times, and im thinking about throwing the AV out the window for now, cause as soon as i thought i had fixed my stuttering it seemed to come back. and it seems around the time i installed the AV... and its almost the same type of stuttering just way less frequent, when i get home tonight that is the first thing im doing, worse that can happen is i get a virus reformat and im on about my day. I JUST HOPE TO GOD!!! that is the problem, its been over 2 weeks that i have been trying to deal with this stuttering issue, and left all my other issues off to the side.

Click to expand...

Read the seccond edit.

yea its just on that 1 big tb besides the little 100 mb partition, after i bought that second caviar black becuase i thought it was my caviar green, i known i should of went with a smaller hard drive.... that means i have to reformat do this again correct??? hell if i do that might as well get another hd, a velociraptor so i dont have any problems. how sure are you that this is the problem.

and idk if i mentioned it also stutter loops the sound. idk if it will help you pin point.

sotorious said:

yea its just on that 1 big tb besides the little 100 mb partition, after i bought that second caviar black becuase i thought it was my caviar green, i known i should of went with a smaller hard drive.... that means i have to reformat do this again correct??? hell if i do that might as well get another hd, a velociraptor so i dont have any problems. how sure are you that this is the problem.

and idk if i mentioned it also stutter loops the sound. idk if it will help you pin point.

Click to expand...

Here is an example of how it works. If you have all the piecies of a puzzle put in order by the row they belong in how long does it take to put together? Now through the piecies all over the table.... That's like making sure data is at the begining of the hard drive or all over the place. When you make a small partition at the begining of the drive, when you read files from the disc the head (like a record needle) only travels in a small area. But if it's all over the place the head has to travel 10x or even 100x more the distance to read one file. ALSO If you know physics, or the basiscs You know a record spins faster where? In the outer rim, so the first sectors are always on the outer rim, so your data is read faster if you make one small partition at the outer edge. See where I'm going? It's not about viruses or bigger hdd's, it's really about performance, with any hard drive that's the goal.

mushroomboy said:

sotorious said:

yea its just on that 1 big tb besides the little 100 mb partition, after i bought that second caviar black becuase i thought it was my caviar green, i known i should of went with a smaller hard drive.... that means i have to reformat do this again correct??? hell if i do that might as well get another hd, a velociraptor so i dont have any problems. how sure are you that this is the problem.

and idk if i mentioned it also stutter loops the sound. idk if it will help you pin point.

Click to expand...

Here is an example of how it works. If you have all the piecies of a puzzle put in order by the row they belong in how long does it take to put together? Now through the piecies all over the table.... That's like making sure data is at the begining of the hard drive or all over the place. When you make a small partition at the begining of the drive, when you read files from the disc the head (like a record needle) only travels in a small area. But if it's all over the place the head has to travel 10x or even 100x more the distance to read one file. ALSO If you know physics, or the basiscs You know a record spins faster where? In the outer rim, so the first sectors are always on the outer rim, so your data is read faster if you make one small partition at the outer edge. See where I'm going? It's not about viruses or bigger hdd's, it's really about performance, with any hard drive that's the goal.

Click to expand...

*sigh* well before making the partition, which will be the last on my list after i do a few other things, because i dont feel like re loading everything at this moment (maybe on sunday when im off) ill start with the ant virus the defragging (even though ive defragged atleast 3 times in the last week or so) and then if it continues i will try the partition.

do you think any of the other 3 drives can be causing any problems as well?

and does windows 7 have a self partitioning program, or am i going to have to do that with another program.

and i thought the caviar black edition was made for performance.

i was wondering if i could do it this way, since i have what i have on the drive so far, take the rest of the memory and use it as a partition you think that would work??? what the stuff already installed be in front of the disk while taking the other 800gb an using it as a partition.

Minor update, so far i have uninstalled nod32 defragged with a different program besides the stock windows defragger (used defraggler) i defraged tf2 and deleted the config (i read somewhere that sometimes it can be a problem) added some ram memory to tf2 using heapsize thing

i also go some hd tune screen shots for you so you guys could double check and see the drives are ok and installed the latest beta drivers for my gfx card that the guy had recommended in this thread.

so far no stutter but im still not counting it out, still going to continue testing threw the weekend and if it proceeds i will take further necessary steps.

CAVIARBLACK.png picture by sotorious2000 - Photobucket

there is hd tune of my drive.

if it continues to lag ( which i hope to god it doesn't)

i will unplug both my externals again just to double check, update chipset and mobo, check ram with mem test, check cpu with some sort of stress test, and last but not least reformat with a partition. if it continues to fail, i think i will just end my life....
no if it does continue to fail i will be sending parts back 1 by 1, or just wait a while and maybe a few updates will be able to fix this.

Hdtune screenshot is fine.

smarteyeball said:

Hdtune screenshot is fine.

Click to expand...

yea i thought it would be just double checking. what pisses me off is my previous system was weaker than this one (same gfx card) and never had a problem like this so it has to be something simple i just cant pin point it. i dont wanna blame it on windows because if windows was the problem alot more people would be having this problem. unless its a combination of windows and hardware.

sotorious said:

i will unplug both my externals again just to double check,

Click to expand...

Leave them unplugged for the weekend unless you really need something on the drive.

update chipset and mobo

Click to expand...

I'd do that anyway.

if it continues to fail, i think i will just end my life....

Click to expand...

That's all well and good, but how's that going to fix the slow downs?

no if it does continue to fail i will be sending parts back 1 by 1

Click to expand...

Unless you have an actual h/ware error, it's an exercise in unnecessary frustration with no guarantee it will solve the problem.

I didn't read every word, so my bad if this has been suggested and/or attempted....but install the latest driver for the video card.

Drivers - Download NVIDIA Drivers

Overclock with RivaTuner after.

If that doesn't help you, install 32-bit Windows.

I've read this thread from the start.

One thing I can tell without any doubt.
The harddisks themselves are not what's causing this.
Even the green Caviar running at 5400 should be more than enough to run any game.

What I would like to ask is a full list of all software installed on the system,
down to the smallest utility.
And a list with names and versions of important drivers you installed, like chipset, audio, graphics, network card etc.

Also a more detailed description of the setup.

In your specs I only see external hard drives.
What kind of drive is the OS drive? Sata or IDE?
Are the games you have problems with, installed on an internal drive or external?
What frame rates and resolutions are you playing the games at?

In the BIOS have you set the disks to 32bit transfers?
Do you have a large amount of music or video files on any of the drives?

Although I ask for much info, keep the comments short.

Your first post was kind of hard to get through. Too much story, too little info.
I hope you know what I mean?

Greetings