PC freezing up momentarily over and over

[Subversive]

disable (in task manager) all 'non-essential' items, from my experience I would definitely disable any network devices (even if they aren't in use), also bluetooth, IR ports, all of which could be polling at regular intervals....

Keep in mind, I have 4 GB of memory, and a dual core CPU at 2.33 Ghz. Even if things are polling regularly, it shouldn't lock up the whole PC.

[sub]

Sure, I guess its worth trying other decoders.

2007-10-07 19:59:47.411 VERBOSE Graph contains the following filters:
2007-10-07 19:59:47.411 VERBOSE - Default DirectSound Device
2007-10-07 19:59:47.411 VERBOSE - ffdshow Audio Decoder
2007-10-07 19:59:47.411 VERBOSE - Video Renderer
2007-10-07 19:59:47.411 VERBOSE - AC3Filter
2007-10-07 19:59:47.411 VERBOSE - ffdshow raw video filter
2007-10-07 19:59:47.411 VERBOSE - MPEG Audio Decoder
2007-10-07 19:59:47.411 VERBOSE - NVIDIA Video Decoder
2007-10-07 19:59:47.411 VERBOSE - MPEG-2 Demultiplexer
2007-10-07 19:59:47.411 VERBOSE - Encoder
2007-10-07 19:59:47.411 VERBOSE - Capture
2007-10-07 19:59:47.411 VERBOSE - Hauppauge WinTV PVR PCI II Crossbar
2007-10-07 19:59:47.411 VERBOSE - TV Audio
2007-10-07 19:59:47.411 VERBOSE - TV Tuner

It does strangely seem to have three audio decoders and two video decoders in there, when there should only be one of each.

[Subversive]

Sure, I guess its worth trying other decoders.

It does strangely seem to have three audio decoders and two video decoders in there, when there should only be one of each.

Can you recommend a couple? I have tried the Nvidia Pure video decoder trial, it seems worse than the Nero one that I am using currently. Thanks.

[sub]

I dont really like to recommend decoders since they all seem to behave so differently on different machines, but a decent simple MPEG2 decoder can be found here http://www.free-codecs.com/download/MPV_Decoder.htm. The matching audio decoder is http://www.free-codecs.com/download/MPA_Decoder.htm

You may need to uninstall ffdshow and ac3filter to make sure these dont cause problems. Also make sure you explicitly select these decoders on the playback tab of the config app.

[Subversive]

Okay, so I tried that decoder. It seemed better at first, in that I could watch recordings that were happening with no problems. Live TV won't even let me in right now, but I think that's an entirely different problem. Now, however, it is hanging like before, only not as consistently. The blips are only coming somewhat randomly, maybe twice a minute or so. I setup perfmon to monitor every process running on the computer for % processor time and added the graph for the CPU. As before, the CPU spikes to around 40-70 percent whenever a hang is happening. Oddly, there isn't any consistent process which is spiking at the same time as the CPU. Once in awhile it was IE, other times it is Azureus, and still other times no process appears to spike. So, I'm still confused, still frustrated, still torrenting all my favourite TV shows.

[sub]

Sorry, I dont know then.

[djmuk]

Keep in mind, I have 4 GB of memory, and a dual core CPU at 2.33 Ghz. Even if things are polling regularly, it shouldn't lock up the whole PC.

You would be surprised - no matter how fast your cpu if an I/O routine turns off intterrupts or executes a system modal process the system will 'pause'. Also windows relies on 'co-operative' multitasking so any process that does not call it's windows message loop (or some other windows system calls) regularly will hog the system. Networking is particularly bad especially stuff like dhcp that sends request/response pairs and sits and waits for the response...

[tieke]

Have you tried unchecking the "plugins enabled" setting in the config? I have had stutters in the past and managed to attribute it to the webcams, weather plugin etc.