Windows 7 Everything lags after a few minutes

[VsUK]

Everything lags on my kids pc. its a Dell Core2Duo, not an amazing system but my kids like to sit & watch funny youtube video's & stuff. Its got a HD3780 GPU in & everything is dust free as I clean it often. I have no idea why it's doing it or what could be causing it. When I say everything lags I mean everything, the mouse cursor, videos playing & music. I recorded a minute of it happening so you can see what I mean.

Advice would be great as I'm not an intel fan & this problem has only happened on Intel systems for me. It's got plenty of memory & HDD space & the browser is not lagging as its memory usage is low. I don't know if its getting to hot, would heat cause this?

 

[Fixer1234]

On the video, it was hard to see what was actually lagging. However, what you describe is generally caused by resources on the computer being maxed out; new activities have to wait for available resources. Either you are trying to do too many resource-intensive things for that computer's capabilities, or (more likely), there is a software problem (two programs in conflict, an incompatible browser add-in, something corrupted that keeps sending the computer on a wild goose chase that eats up resources, a resource-intensive program that relies on a slow network connection, etc.). I would start by checking a couple of things that are very common problems:

• Make sure you don't have more than one anti-virus program running in the background that does active (real-time) monitoring. That will bring your computer to a crawl.
• Start your browser in safe mode and see if the problem disappears. Problems with plug-ins are a common cause of these kinds of problems. If the problem disappears, disable all of the add-ins and then enable them one at a time to find the culprit.

If it is not one of those two things, get back to the forum for round 2.

ps - if the problem was heat-related, it would be more likely that the computer would crash or hang, not lag.

 

[Fixer1234]

If all of the lagging takes place in your browser but doesn't affect other activity, there is one more easy thing to check. Try disabling ad blockers and pop-up blockers, at least on the web pages that are open when you experience the lag. Some web sites have analytics and/or advertizing tightly tied to the site, sometimes even as a condition of using the site. A side effect is that the site will spend a lot of time trying to feed these when you don't cooperate and it can cause the browser to hang. You could also test this by opening the browser but not opening your usual web pages. Just open something like a Google search page and see if the lag occurs when it typically does. Just another possibility to easily rule out.

 

[VsUK]

Hi, the lagging is system wide. The browser playing a youtube video was just the best example to record to show you. I could close everything thats running, so im just left with the desktop & the mouse cursor would lag, you try & move & it jumps about.

It has 4GB ddr2, less than half that is being used. 250gb HDD & a HD3780 GPU. It never used to happen & then all of a sudden it started. Rebooting stops the lagging for a few minutes & then it starts up again.

 

[Fixer1234]

If it was browser-related, it would stop when you close the browser.

• Start with verifying that you have just one active AV program.
  
• Next step, see if the problem occurs when you do a clean boot: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/929135
• If it happens with a clean boot, run sfc /scannow.
  
• It a clean boot eliminates the problem, it will take some detective work. Use msconfig to disable the non-Microsoft software loaded at boot and add the programs in one at a time or in small groups.
• If this doesn't find the culprit, get back and we'll try a bigger hammer.