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Problem description: My PC is my work PC and gaming PC. Recently Windows 8.1 has been hanging randomly during the day, I believe this to be Windows 'doing its thing', but i'm not so sure. I get 100% disk usage at random intervals. Task manager shows which are the offending programs, but most of the time, it can be any program which isn't conclusive evidence. If you opened up skye for example, the usage would go upto 100% for a short while. I did think it was AVAST anti virus which I have been a fan of for years, I have since switched from that, as avast had about 5 processes in of itself. I now use bitdefender which seems nice and lightweight, but I see it's update process also go mad. I did try running Windows Defender alone, but wimped out and grabbed bitdefender. Win Defender seemed ok, but i'm not running the risk. While working in Chrome and watching something on another monitor, I had a hard lockup which eventually went back to normal. This was a good 2-5 minutes lockup, I since pressed the power button on my system, so when it stopped being stupid the PC shut down. I never should get lockups, I got my system in 2011 and I believe it's still good for my days work (Photoshop, indesign, Skype, browsers). I haven't been PC gaming much recently to be honest, but I can't recall any time where a game has stuttered to death like it does during the day, it's so irritating! It's worth mentioning that my HDD is 1tb and i'm a bit over half used, so there' a little slither of free space left. I regularly declutter [ccleaner etc and defrag]. Could it be windows 8.1 struggling with my 6gb ram. Ram is cheap nowadays so maybe jumping to 8gb may help? It's apple and oranges, but I'd love to boot up the PC and just whiz around like on an iPad / Mac. There's an annoying delay and lag. I get that it's services/processes and etc but c'mon. Attempted fixes: - Changes from AVAST to bitdefender - Stopped the superfetch service and among other useless ones - Done the usual scans, CCleaner, malware etc - Changed pagefile setting - Changed power mode to 'high power' rather than Balanced, it was on Balanced. I've only done this not long ago, fingers crossed this might help - Googled, most dance around disabling superfetch, or the solutions i've already tried.  EDIT: I'm getting it right now, the process is 'System' and is chewing 6.0MBs of disk usage. I am not doing anything. Photoshop is open, as is utorrent and skype [all idling]. But it's not like i'm saving a movie. Recent changes: Have you made any changes to your system/configuration recently that might have caused the problem? Nope! It has been happening for the past month or so I believe. Just seems more pronounced recently, especially after todays big lockup -- Operating system: Windows 8.1 pro 64bit System specs: Intel Core i7 (950 @ 3.07GHz) HIS ATI Radeon HD 6970 2048MB GDDR5 Corsair XMS3 6GB (3x2GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Triple Channel (CMX6GX3M3A1600C9) If i were to get more RAM, does it have to be the exact same? Looking through my case, it says the Ram is 1 of 3 [a kit?], if you added 2 others, would it mess things up? (I would get Corsair anyway, forum posts mention stuff about channels and etc, I just want to up the number) I have Googled and read the FAQ: Yes Sevalar fucked around with this message at 15:30 on Feb 11, 2015 |
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Feb 11, 2015 14:37
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| # ? May 18, 2024 06:58 |
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I'm sorry I can't really answer your question, but I have had this problem every time I've tried to use 8+ on a HDD. I eventually gave up on Win8 until I put an SSD in my main desktop. The issue still comes up, but it's no longer humanly noticeable. Still happens if I try to run 8 on either of my two laptops. I think with buying RAM there is no guarantee that you can add more to an existing set without issue, though it isn't exactly destined for failure. I believe that buying an entire set with the exact amount you want is the safest option, though you could still run into issue there even. I'm not sure RAM is your problem though. I'd be willing to bet the iPads and Macs you whiz around on have SSDs or other flash-based storage. You may just want to give in and buy a decently sized one like I did. If someone has a better answer though I'd love to hear it.
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Feb 11, 2015 20:19
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Flagrama posted:I'm sorry I can't really answer your question, but I have had this problem every time I've tried to use 8+ on a HDD. I eventually gave up on Win8 until I put an SSD in my main desktop. The issue still comes up, but it's no longer humanly noticeable. Still happens if I try to run 8 on either of my two laptops. I've looked into SSDs, but was worried that their gimmickery will soon become ubiquitous (and cheaper) but like with all technology I guess this is standard. What else have you see improvement with a SSD? I have lots of sensitive files [well work files] that I backup, I hear SSDs are nearly fail-safe [almost].
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Feb 11, 2015 21:02
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First, post a Crystal Disk Info screenshot of your system drive so we can confirm it's not logging errors, since that would definitely cause slowdowns. Second, you're using third-party antivirus programs that pretty significant impact on system performance, so uninstall it and see how much better things work. Using Windows Defender isn't risky in any way because third-party antivirus software isn't providing you with real protection. Finally, yeah 6GB of RAM isn't much these days, but keep in mind that your system takes RAM Modules in sets of three, so your next upgrade would be to 12GB. At the end of the day, an SSD is the correct choice. Make sure you get something good (not the cheap Crucial or off-brand crap) and you should have a pretty good experience. Reliability for Intel and Samsung drives is significantly better than harddrives, for cheaper brands like OCZ it's significantly worse.
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Feb 11, 2015 21:11
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I've uninstalled bitdefender for now to see how it goes, but I have seen it go to 100% but the system was performing fine and not getting stuck. Will see how i get on without it. So SSD is preferable to a RAM upgrade? Hey if that means a cool boot time and easy file transfers i'm down. I might wait a bit for prices to drop when SSDs become a bit more commonplace. Here's the screenshot btw, hopefully everything is in order 
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Feb 12, 2015 11:10
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