I have a stttttttamer

[greeny]

My PC has developeed a kind of stammer!!! Particularly noticable when playing music -its like it gets stuck for a second or 2 the carries on. Please help cos its really starting to get on my nerves.

[chim_girl]

Do you need a new stylus for the CD player?

[slinky]

what sort of spec is the machine?
Processor
Memory
Operating system
applications open when the fault occurs....

slinky

[chim_girl]

www.pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?h=0&f=95&t=124400

Are you sure it's not you?

[greeny]

Crap - I thought I had lost the first post!!
Will sort out the spec and re post Slinky.

[greeny]

OK Athlon 2600
1.92 ghz
448mb of ram
Windows XP 2002
all from evesham
Happens even if Windows Media Player is open.

[slinky]

OK, does the fault only occur when you have media player open?

Open task manager (hold ctrl+shift and press Esc) and have a look at the performance tab.. what are the rough average values for CPU and Memory use?

Is it occuring in all applications or just during specific tasks?

slinky

[greeny]

CPU jumps from 0% - 7% with only PH open
PF usage 381 MB
Does seem to freeze even as I am typing this with nothing else open

[slinky]

seems as though you might have some weird and wonderful processes going on in the background..

Have you tried running any form of malware scanner? Something like Ad-Aware or Spybot Search and destroy?

Have a quick look at the processes tab and see if there is anything you don't recognise (not 100% necessary, especially if you've never looked at it before!, but if you have, there may well be some clues in there)

slinky

[greeny]

I have got Spybot installed, will run again to see if it picks up anything new. Thanks

[greeny]

Clicked processes tab, everything closed down - a file called drst.exe continues to show usage. Is this normal?

[slinky]

drst.exe is a speedtouch application, I presume you have a speedtouch modem, so that isn't anything to worry about...

What do you have in your startup group within Windows? Are there any TSR (terminate and stay resident) apps that could be using significant resources?

What sort of stuff do you have running in your system tray at the moment?

Do you have Automatic updates turned on? is something for AU running through at the moment?

If all else is lost, drop me the serial number for your machine and I'll contact a mate of mine who works for Evesham.com....

slinky

[greeny]

Sorry not pc literate enough to answer that sort of stuff. Serial No is WO01031876 purchased from Reading beginning of this year.

[slinky]

okey dokey.. I'll drop some details to my chap and see if I/we/he can do anything for you...

bizarely, this tech support thread is being posted from evesham, less than two miles away from the place your computer was built..

slinky

[greeny]

Freaky!! Many thanks for your help so far.