Random Lag, possibly explorer.Troubleshooting issues.

[eracet]

I am currently having issues with random lag on explorer and programs.
What it is exactly doing is giving unresponsive for about 30 seconds on programs such as firefox, thunderbird, explorer.exe.
Thought it may be a resource issue but doesnt appear to be.

Here is the full version:

I received a 4TB hybrid drive to increase performance over my slower 2TB 3gb/s drive.
Cloned windows on a different PC,
Did not work since 4TB needed a different boot, so fresh install of 4TB drive using windows 7 disc.
Put the old windows 7 as a backup drive for old programs and document transfers etc.
Installed 500 updates
Loaded programs
Current list of some running programs:
Firefox with adblock,
Avast,
Aida,
HD sentinel
Winpatrol,
Display Fusion,
Steam,
Carbonite,
Razor Comms,
Razor Synapse,
Logitech gaming software,
Thunderbird email,
DAEMON Tools lite,

A few others I didn't mention but these are the main ones that run frequently.
I did have unhackme but just uninstalled it because I thought that may of been the issue but was not.

Here is troubleshooting steps I have done.
SFC/ scandisc.
Malwarebytes scan,
unhack me scan (Currently not running atm)
Removed Firefox plugins.
Troubleshooting with Resource monitor and Performace monitor (No luck yet)
Removed some unused Startup programs.
Full update on everything.

This one is really throwing me. Been working on it for days.
Looking at shockwave or adobe flash issues maybe as well. But don't think that would throw off everything.

 

[whs]

Run this program to check for possible driver problems (red bars) - DPC Latency Checker

 

[eracet]

Running it and see spikes in latency, but not sure what I should disable or try looking at.

Any advice?

One thing that is really strange is I see such things as when playing a game , that I see a strange lag with highlighting icons , windows flashing at times etc.
I run 3 monitors and primary gaming , then I see an icon on the left monitor highlight etc.

 

[whs]

You have to check your drivers. I would check the graphics driver first.

 

[eracet]

I updated Graphics drivers nvidia,
Seen 5 unknowns (fixed)
One General USB hub conflict , still unknown source.
Updated 28 drivers , motherboard and other, VIA Slimdrivers.

One thing I see that is odd is it lists a lot of duplicates in device manager.
Such as Duplicate USB controllers,
8 processor listings instead of 4.
And some are right correctly listed.
I do notice that when it starts lagging it does flash device manager so makes me think that its on the right path.
I disabled network adapters, USB stuff, etc.

 

[eracet]

I went though all controllers, updated Video drivers from Scratch.
Disabled a ton of things, finally got into
IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers
and seen that there is 2 ATA Channel 0,1,2,3
And a single ATA channel 4
I disabled the second ATA channel 1, the Second ATA channel 2 and the Third Channel 3

When I disabled the second ATA channel 2 it disabled one of my program drives on restart.
But it seemed to kill the latency to 0 with no lag spikes.

I went to re-enable ATA channel 2 and it brought back my main program drive.

It still seems as though one of my drives are disabled (I have 7) and currently only 2 ata channels are disabled.

What can I do to bring back the last HDD and is it an error in possible cable malfunction or ?

 

[eracet]

Ok I removed one HDD , that seemed to be causing issues.. I was wrong.
After disabling IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers, the issue came back.
Was running ok for a day with no latency issues.
I re-enabled after everything seemed ok for the day. Issue came back.
Now I re-disabled them removed a HDD and the issue is back

 

[eracet]

I messed back and forth with IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers.
Back and forth turning some off and then back on.

Was unable to troubleshoot any specific ones that are causing issues.

So I opened resource monitor and watched Disk read and write rate.

Noticed carbonite (Cloud Backup) was running on multiple drives for read, for backup purposes.

When putting Carbonite on pause it seemed to stop any latency from happening.

Could this be related to carbonite?

I also have new SATA cables coming that I may try to plug in 2 of my HDD into the controller card I have on PCI and see if that makes any difference.

Does anyone have any other suggestions,
Considered BIOS flash as well.

 

[eracet]

Update: Flashed new bios

Still points to carbonite pausing seems to decrease lag.

Only issue I have is I have a Generic USB hub conflict in device manager.

Having issue figuring out where it is coming from.
May end up disconnection all USB devices and see if it still shows,

I really only see 5 hubs and it shows 6 but then again it shows duplicates of a lot of different ones.

 

[eracet]

Talked to Carbonite for 2 hours , resolved nothing.
I did notice that when installing a program or any accessing to drives that happens I do get lag and program unresponsiveness.
All Device conflicts are fixed, had a bad USB hub.
Put all new SATA cables on all drives.
Carbonite "experts" mentioned that there software is working good, but may be some registry leak.
I really don't want to do a registry "fixer" but not sure what else to do.

Did a system restore point and then it gave me lag for a little bit.

 

[eracet]

I did a registry clean.
Found some issues but nothing major.

But here is what I see at the moment.
Still lag with CArbonite running (When backing up files) not searching for backups.

Here is the most interesting part and could be the culprit.
Icon overlays are changing from time to time, from the Carbonite overlay to a share overlay, to a checkmark.

Here is a copy of my overlay list. Not sure if it is trying to use the old windows HDD overlay as well or not.

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\ShellIconOverlayIdentifiers]

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\ShellIconOverlayIdentifiers\ Carbonite.Green]
@="{95A27763-F62A-4114-9072-E81D87DE3B68}"

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\ShellIconOverlayIdentifiers\ Carbonite.Partial]
@="{E300CD91-100F-4E67-9AF3-1384A6124015}"

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\ShellIconOverlayIdentifiers\ Carbonite.Yellow]
@="{5E529433-B50E-4bef-A63B-16A6B71B071A}"

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\ShellIconOverlayIdentifiers\00avast]
@="{472083B0-C522-11CF-8763-00608CC02F24}"

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\ShellIconOverlayIdentifiers\EnhancedStorageShell]
@="{D9144DCD-E998-4ECA-AB6A-DCD83CCBA16D}"

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\ShellIconOverlayIdentifiers\Groove Explorer Icon Overlay 1 (GFS Unread Stub)]
@="{99FD978C-D287-4F50-827F-B2C658EDA8E7}"

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\ShellIconOverlayIdentifiers\Groove Explorer Icon Overlay 2 (GFS Stub)]
@="{AB5C5600-7E6E-4B06-9197-9ECEF74D31CC}"

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\ShellIconOverlayIdentifiers\Groove Explorer Icon Overlay 2.5 (GFS Unread Folder)]
@="{920E6DB1-9907-4370-B3A0-BAFC03D81399}"

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\ShellIconOverlayIdentifiers\Groove Explorer Icon Overlay 3 (GFS Folder)]
@="{16F3DD56-1AF5-4347-846D-7C10C4192619}"

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\ShellIconOverlayIdentifiers\Groove Explorer Icon Overlay 4 (GFS Unread Mark)]
@="{2916C86E-86A6-43FE-8112-43ABE6BF8DCC}"

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\ShellIconOverlayIdentifiers\Offline Files]
@="{4E77131D-3629-431c-9818-C5679DC83E81}"

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\ShellIconOverlayIdentifiers\SharingPrivate]
@="{08244EE6-92F0-47f2-9FC9-929BAA2E7235}"

 

[smopnim]

I had these issues too and many other weird laggyness and strange happenings. It turned out it was my logitech G15 keyboard. whenever it would happen. I just unplug my keyboard for 5 seconds then plug it back in and it was good to go for a while. I mention this because you said you use Logitech gaming software, I love Logitech products, but their software is horrible and is infamous for causing these types of issues on 64bit operating systems. also it doesn't "get along" with apple software that updates constantly. as soon as quicktime update or itunes runs, my logitech software goes on a rampage. Yesterday i was on ebay and every ad i tried to click on was redirecting me to a new "related" search instead of going to the sellers ad page. I was almost ready to do a reinstall of firefox, then i tested it in IE, same issue. Unplugged my keyboard and bingo bamo everything worked as it should. It's only gotten worse since i added the mad catz software for my mouse to the mix. Sometimes i'll open something and the 20-100 instances will open. The keyboard itself is in excellent shape. It's just the software.

 

[eracet]

Thank you for the suggestion.

I unplugged the g19 keyboard, and also my logitech headset, and retried carbonite ( mostly to check if getting the lag spikes)
and it did spike up as usual.

One thing I am wondering if it may be related to the read of one of the HDDs.
Because it is only when it is reading data that it gives the massive spikes.
This was origionaly why I thought it may of been an explorer shell issue.

I do run HDD sentinal and monitor the activity and see no issues that stand out.
I also thought that HDD sentinal may be a cause , uninstalling didnt make a difference so I reloaded it.

The new HDD that I have is a Hybrid seagate drive. Thought it may be something with that but its always on and no spin up or down time.

I know that this is a very difficult issue to figure out, I am open for other suggestions and always grateful.

 

[eracet]

I talked with Tech and did a remote session with carbonite people. Still fixed nothing but may of found some other things that are related.
Was updating some drivers (downloading) VIA slimdriver.
When this download started I seen a lag spike.
Carbonite is paused and no influence.
Seen my local C: show all red on my computer, as if it was full.
Even though the real usage is about 1/4 of capacity.

The lag continued and the file timed out and gave an error.(Slimdriver)

I have also noticed on running some games that windows wants to go to windows basic configuration as if it was struggling with something.

My virtual memory is set to 16 gb.

 

[eracet]

Continuing troubleshooting.
Noticed the same type of lag when doing something as simple as instaling java.

 

[PlatypusKnight]

This sounds like hard disk thrashing because of an over aggressive HIPS.

I am biased against Avast (and freely admit this) but I suspect your issue lies there. Avast turns my rig to mud. I've heard you can disable some of the more aggressive settings. Try that and see if it works.

Also, tell Avast that Carbonite is not a virus and safe.

 

[eracet]

I did look at the settings before with Avast, and have considered using something else as well.

Figuring the best way to test is to totally uninstall avast and see if it happens.
After a few reboots. Tried testing carbonite again..
Well lag spikes started once more.
So I put carbonite back on paused, reinstalled Avast (This time with only virus scan, no extras)
And lag spikes kept happening when it was installing..

I did consider something with the firmware of my new hybrid drive,
Also did a chcdisk and fixed some issues but latency still persists.

A very large issue is figuring out if it hardware or software .

Any info I can supply that I have not done already please let me know.

Thanks for the suggestion PlatypusKnight.

 

[PlatypusKnight]

I did look at the settings before with Avast, and have considered using something else as well.

Figuring the best way to test is to totally uninstall avast and see if it happens.
After a few reboots. Tried testing carbonite again..
Well lag spikes started once more.

Will look into carbonite. Perhaps its indexer is one of the contributing problems. By definition what it does is check to see if files are changed on your drive and then does a backup correct?
Does it do this in real time, or does it have a setting whereby it only does it at a scheduled time: say 3AM on Sundays?

Do you have lag without carbonite and avast installed?

So I put carbonite back on paused, reinstalled Avast (This time with only virus scan, no extras)
And lag spikes kept happening when it was installing..

Do you have REVO Uninstaller?
How exactly did you remove Avast? I suspect you didn't remove it fully using an Avast removal tool. So even when you thought you uninstalled it, its traces could have been doing devil knows not what on your system. Please confirm.

I did consider something with the firmware of my new hybrid drive,
Also did a chcdisk and fixed some issues but latency still persists.

Fixed some issues? I thought you said this was a new drive. Already experiencing some sort of corruption? That doesn't sound right. That one's out of my wheelhouse.

A very large issue is figuring out if it hardware or software .
Any info I can supply that I have not done already please let me know.
Thanks for the suggestion PlatypusKnight.

On that note please see my next post.

 

[PlatypusKnight]

@eracet please do this:
Speccy - Publish Snapshot of your System Specs
Post the url it generates

And this:
Piriform - How to list installed programs
Post the txt file it generates.

And this:
Also open CCleaner, Click [Tools] and then [Startup].
Please screenshot the [Windows], [Internet Explorer] and [Scheduled Tasks] tabs and post them here.

That way I know what we're working with.

 

[eracet]

Will look into carbonite. Perhaps its indexer is one of the contributing problems. By definition what it does is check to see if files are changed on your drive and then does a backup correct?
Does it do this in real time, or does it have a setting whereby it only does it at a scheduled time: say 3AM on Sundays?

Do you have lag without carbonite and avast installed?

I have not tried uninstalling both,
With testing I do Carbonite and it only lags when it is backing up the files , not the indexing.
I have also windows uninstalled carbonite and still have the issues if I am installing something onto the HDD. I can use something else to test with , just need to find something more convenient. Maybe testing with a cloud service or something that will give reads or writes to HDD

Do you have REVO Uninstaller?
How exactly did you remove Avast? I suspect you didn't remove it fully using an Avast removal tool. So even when you thought you uninstalled it, its traces could have been doing devil knows not what on your system. Please confirm.

I do not have REVO uninstaller. I have Ashampoo uninstaller but do not use it.

Fixed some issues? I thought you said this was a new drive. Already experiencing some sort of corruption? That doesn't sound right. That one's out of my wheelhouse.

When I ran Chkdisk it looked like it was doing some fixing, but to be honest I really only glanced at it when it was running and didnt watch it that close.

Next posts have my info requested