Brief pauses every few seconds on new computer [hardware issue]

[bbloff]

Hi,

I've started experiencing this very strange problem on a new computer (I've worked in PC tech in the past), and I'm not quite sure how to go about troubleshooting. Can't seem to find anyone online who has similar problem. Everything generally runs fine, then seemingly randomly (could be a few minutes after starting up, or a few hours) the computer will begin pausing for about 200ms, every couple of seconds - and it doesn't stop. Meaning it starts a random point in time, but is pretty consistent once it begins.

I first saw it in games, and figured it was a problem with the game, maybe graphics driver. But just then it happened early after startup, with no games running (while browsing). If you run audio while it's happening, you hear the stutters as the system pauses. The mouse locks as well, so it appears to be some sort of low level lockup/freeze. You can otherwise keep running the computer as normal, it's just not terribly useable.

- Running windows vista home basic 64bit edition
- Task manager shows no anomolies.
- Device manager normal, with exception of exclamation mark on 'isatap' network adapter (which I've read can be ignored).
- If I put computer to sleep (i.e. suspend mode) and wake it up again, the problem goes away, indicating it is not a software issue (i.e. dodgy background process). Still could be driver that gets hardware into bad state.
- Computer is only few months old, unlikely it has picked up any malware as have taken precautions against this.

System specifications are:
- Gigabyte EX-58-UD4P motherboard
- Intel i7-920 (not overclocked)
- Corsair dominator DDR3-1600 RAM (3x2GB)
- Asus Xonar DX PCI sound card
- WD Green power 640GB drive
- Inno3D GTX260 OC video
- Corsair TX 750w PSU

Right now disabling sound card and waiting to see if goes away is only thing I can think of (seems unlikely to be video, and not easy for me to swap in another). Next time it starts happening, I'm just not sure what I can do to help narrow it down.

Anyone experienced this before, or have any hints as to what it could be or what I could try?

If it means anything, I had installed some old school USB drivers for my digital camera (that as it turns out aren't compatible with vista64), and I guess it's possible they stuffed something up.

Cheers

[GroundZero3]

Does it do it in safe mode?

[KarmaKiller]

Have you checked temps?
Also I'd run memtest over night, and see if that shows anything.
Maybe check into a BIOS update? Sometimes they can have odd errors and such if it's running an outdated BIOS.
Did it do it before the installed the digi camera drivers?

[bbloff]

Unfortunately it's difficult to reproduce, like it happens maybe once every week or two, though it happened both yesterday and today. I can run computer for extended periods and won't happen at all, so my expectation is it could take some time to verify if problem gone. I haven't seen it in safe mode, but unless starts happening more frequenty/predictably it's hard to say if it does/could happen in safe mode. This morning I had just started browsing the internet (forums), wasn't doing anything intensive when it started.

I had thought about temps, and I will definitely check that next time it happens. Certainly under normal operation the temp is fine (27-32C range over the cores right now), I have a Xigmatek DK-S1283 CPU cooler.

I'll check for bios updates, certainly can't hurt to move to latest, and I haven't run a memtest so will do that shortly as well.

The digital camera drivers went on pretty early (hadn't happened before then), I just mentioned it as they're from 2002 model camera or something, and vista didn't like them. In theory they have been removed, though I know it doesn't always work like that.

[bbloff]

Ok so it's taken since my original post for the problem to reproduce, and I've finally nailed the cause. This post is for anyone else that might experience the problem.

For starters, I had only looked in the 'Application' windows log, which was pretty stupid of me (who knows why I neglected to check the system log ). Anyway looking in the system log, there was a spam of errors about cdrom not ready (about one per second). While the pausing was happening, I disabled the CD-ROM in device manager, and all fixed.

The CD drive model is 'TSSTcorp CDDVDW SH-S222A SCSI CdRom Device'.

Had no idea a basic peripheral like this had the ability to freeze your entire system.