WinXP: strange stuttering

Diedel · Post by **Diedel** » Mon Jun 25, 2007 2:47 pm

When I booted my WinXP machine a few days ago, I found the desktop completely rearranged and apparently reverted to some pretty old state, with icons on it I had long removed.

Since then, whenever I open an application window or switch to one and start working in it and moving the mouse around in it, the mouse cursor freezes briefly (maybe a second or so), and then can be moved again.

This is very weird.

Any idea what this is and how to fix it?

Grendel · Post by **Grendel** » Mon Jun 25, 2007 3:10 pm

Hm, could be anything. I would first check for HDD problems.

Diedel · Post by **Diedel** » Mon Jun 25, 2007 3:35 pm

Could it be this SecuROM copy protection? I installed Supreme Commander a few days ago, and it came with that crap.

Krom · Post by **Krom** » Mon Jun 25, 2007 3:36 pm

Could have been a registry crash too, try using system restore to turn everything back to before it messed up.

Diedel · Post by **Diedel** » Mon Jun 25, 2007 3:58 pm

Maybe both ... may HD got very hot recently, although it is watercooled (55 deg centigrade at the outside).

Krom · Post by **Krom** » Mon Jun 25, 2007 4:05 pm

o_O 55 outside? Yikes, my CPU never gets over 35 and I think that is hot!

/me sitting in comfortable air conditioned room. :-3

Tunnelcat · Post by **Tunnelcat** » Mon Jun 25, 2007 4:19 pm

Almost sounds like an older restore point was activated, or maybe even Windows Update that runs every second Tuesday of every month. Or worse, a virus.

What's the problem with SecuROM? The only copy protection scheme I've had any problems with is Starforce.

Diedel · Post by **Diedel** » Mon Jun 25, 2007 5:04 pm

Actually I am wondering whether some trojan is doing screen copies whenever I change a window.

Krom · Post by **Krom** » Mon Jun 25, 2007 5:35 pm

http://housecall.trendmicro.com/houseca ... t_corp.asp

Worth a try anyway. :-/

JMEaT · Post by **JMEaT** » Tue Jun 26, 2007 6:17 am

Spybot S&D
AdAware
Windows Defender

Run the 1st 2 in safe mode. Windows Defender is more of a preventative program; it runs as a process and watches for malware.

Tunnelcat · Post by **Tunnelcat** » Tue Jun 26, 2007 4:37 pm

Windows Defender is a great little tool, but I had to uninstall it because it caused several install failures when I tried to put a couple of new games on my other system.

However, I would recommend you try it out on your system to look for any malware and as a bonus you can check out every running task on your system. It's great for that.

Diedel · Post by **Diedel** » Tue Jun 26, 2007 4:42 pm

I have the first two.

I have run two different malware checkers (sophos and RootkitRevealer) and run a virus check (NAV) plus installed WinPatrol, but none of these have found a trojan or backdoor. :-/

I will definitely try Windows Defender and the Trend Micro HouseCall (the latter takes a real long time to scan the system so I haven't used it yet).

Krom, my CPU was much cooler. I had been running two extremely computing intensive tasks on my system for many hours, and a dual core CPU gets hotter than single core (don't know what kind of CPU you have), so it may get hot, particularly if the room is very warm.

Tunnelcat · Post by **Tunnelcat** » Tue Jun 26, 2007 4:58 pm

I wish you luck. Windows Defender will be fun to play with.

Krom · Post by **Krom** » Tue Jun 26, 2007 5:10 pm

Diedel wrote:Krom, my CPU was much cooler. I had been running two extremely computing intensive tasks on my system for many hours, and a dual core CPU gets hotter than single core (don't know what kind of CPU you have), so it may get hot, particularly if the room is very warm.

I have a C2D E6600, in winter I have seen idle temps as low as 20C. Lately since it has been a lot warmer out, it runs closer to 35C idle, I probably also need to flush out the coolant...

Grendel · Post by **Grendel** » Tue Jun 26, 2007 5:43 pm

Measured via CoreTemp or Asus tool ? Latter gives too low temps (using an external sensor).

Krom · Post by **Krom** » Tue Jun 26, 2007 8:39 pm

Measured using CoreTemp here.

Diedel · Post by **Diedel** » Wed Jun 27, 2007 4:38 am

My measurment are made using temperature probes attached to the coolers.

Tunnelcat · Post by **Tunnelcat** » Thu Jun 28, 2007 4:15 pm

Ever figure out what the problem was Diedel?

WinXP: strange stuttering

WinXP: strange stuttering

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