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Computer Stuttering

M

MasterOfPupets

Limp Gawd
Joined
Jun 22, 2004
Messages
235
Not sure if this goes in the Mobile or General Hardware section, so I'm putting it here since it will probably get more views.

I'm having some issues with my computer stuttering, primarily while playing videos or games. It will render videos unwatchable either by skipping, pausing randomly, or lagging (does something like when you lag in an online game. Pauses for a few seconds, and then plays everything that should have been shown in those few seconds extremely fast to catch up to where it should be.) It also causes major lag in several games, namely Mass Effect, which has become unplayable because any time someone starts to say something, it begins to lag for a second, and then catches up to where it should be.

The issue isn't overheating. While the Processor can get a bit warm during games, it's nothing too bad (60* ish) and playing videos doesn't even cause it to blink (core I7 Sandy Bridge CPU.) I'm thinking the issue has something to do with the HDD (Seagate Momentus XT 500GB) because of some Troubleshooting I've done. I've got an external HDD here with several videos on it. When playing videos from the external drive, I have no issues with skipping or anything, plays fine. Transferring that video to the internal HDD and playing it from there causes the issues to arise again. Unfortunately I've been unable to work on further diagnosing the problem, since I can't seam to download any diagnostic tools.

Here's the issue with that, I'm currently staying in this lovely shithole known as Afghanistan for the US Army. They, apparently, feel all sites that allow you to download things (like a HDD dignostic program) are evil and should be blocked. Thus, I haven't been able to confirm my suspicion.

Does anyone have any advice on what other tests I can perform, or what other things could be causing the issue? Preferably things that don't require wiping the HDD since I have no way of restoring it here, especially all the downloaded games I won't be able to retrieve.

Full Specs:
Sager NP5160 Notebook
Intel I7 Sandy Bridge 2.0Ghz
8GB RAM
Seagate Momentus XT 500GB HDD
GeForce 540M Hybrid graphics

Think that's all the pertinent info.

Any help would be appreciated, and if anyone has a HDD dignostic program small enough to send through email, I'd greatly appreciate it.
 
MasterOfPupets said:
Not sure if this goes in the Mobile or General Hardware section, so I'm putting it here since it will probably get more views.

I'm having some issues with my computer stuttering, primarily while playing videos or games. It will render videos unwatchable either by skipping, pausing randomly, or lagging (does something like when you lag in an online game. Pauses for a few seconds, and then plays everything that should have been shown in those few seconds extremely fast to catch up to where it should be.) It also causes major lag in several games, namely Mass Effect, which has become unplayable because any time someone starts to say something, it begins to lag for a second, and then catches up to where it should be.

The issue isn't overheating. While the Processor can get a bit warm during games, it's nothing too bad (60* ish) and playing videos doesn't even cause it to blink (core I7 Sandy Bridge CPU.) I'm thinking the issue has something to do with the HDD (Seagate Momentus XT 500GB) because of some Troubleshooting I've done. I've got an external HDD here with several videos on it. When playing videos from the external drive, I have no issues with skipping or anything, plays fine. Transferring that video to the internal HDD and playing it from there causes the issues to arise again. Unfortunately I've been unable to work on further diagnosing the problem, since I can't seam to download any diagnostic tools.

Here's the issue with that, I'm currently staying in this lovely shithole known as Afghanistan for the US Army. They, apparently, feel all sites that allow you to download things (like a HDD dignostic program) are evil and should be blocked. Thus, I haven't been able to confirm my suspicion.

Does anyone have any advice on what other tests I can perform, or what other things could be causing the issue? Preferably things that don't require wiping the HDD since I have no way of restoring it here, especially all the downloaded games I won't be able to retrieve.

Full Specs:
Sager NP5160 Notebook
Intel I7 Sandy Bridge 2.0Ghz
8GB RAM
Seagate Momentus XT 500GB HDD
GeForce 540M Hybrid graphics

Think that's all the pertinent info.

Any help would be appreciated, and if anyone has a HDD dignostic program small enough to send through email, I'd greatly appreciate it.
Click to expand...

Since the problem shows only while accessing the Momentus, it seems that it's failing.

Download a few HDD health apps and run their scans, then report back to us. S.M.A.R.T scans should show poor health on the drive -- If that's the case, you need
to RMA/Replace it. Is there any way you can access a proxy and download the needed software to perform these tests?
 
Well, I downloaded both HD Tune and Seatools to see what they would do. HD Tune can't find any issues with my drive. Still waiting to run Seatools since it needs .net 4.0 which I apparently need to download.

Only thing I could guess from running HD Tune's Drive monitor while running a video, is that for some reason it's not properly loading into the cache. Really stumped on this one.

Realized there is an upgraded firmware for my HDD though, so I'm probably going to try that and see if it helps, otherwise wait til Seatools get's downloaded and see if it finds anything.
 
I've seen no indication on any of my searching that my drive is of that format, and according to that article, the manufacturer would provide a program to re-allign it if it was, and they don't, so I'm going to have to assume it doesn't apply to me.
 
MasterOfPupets said:
I've seen no indication on any of my searching that my drive is of that format, and according to that article, the manufacturer would provide a program to re-allign it if it was, and they don't, so I'm going to have to assume it doesn't apply to me.
Click to expand...

If its a drive made in late 2010 or later and you didn't buy the hard drive in a retail box where they may have given you a disc or weblink to go to for "updates" then you would have an advanced format HDD without even knowing. Since nobody puts discs in the box anymore it could have been something easy to miss.
 
So, I haven't abandoned this thread, and the problem still persists. I've tried everything in this thread and nothing works. I've found a very interesting workaround though. For some reason, the stuttering stops when I'm running a read-speed benchmark on the drive in HD-Tune. If I run a video or start a game while the benchmark is running, no issues. Once the benchmark is done, back to stuttering.

Seagate is no help at all with this issue so far. Anyone have any advice?
 
Disable any power saving features that might be turned on?
 
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