[Los Santos Pedestrian]

My 5 year-old computer, that's been holding up very well considering its age, may be beginning to show it. This has never happened since my upgrade in May, but now I'm getting a problem with my framerate while playing games. It'll mostly stay at a good 30-35 FPS most of the time, but every 3-5 seconds, the game will almost freeze for less than a second, and then repeat. This is disrupting my experience, and is very annoying. I haven't tested all of my games, but this has happened in Team Fortress 2 and Left 4 Dead 2.

My specs:

AMD Athlon X2 @ 2.1 GHz
NVIDIA GeForce GT 240, 1024 MB video RAM; GPU @ 550 MHz
3.00 GB RAM
Windows Vista Home Premium SP2, 32-bit

Any help would be appreciated.

[Stinky12]

Do you remember what's the last thing you did when it happened, like ran software updates, add a new hardware, etc?
Does it only happen while play online or happens also while offline?
Does it only do this when playing games?

Run Chkdsk on your HDD, the look at the log for any bad sectors. Log is located in Computer Mangement>Event Viewer>Windows Logs>Application. Look at Source column and find Chkdsk
Run a diagnostic check on your HDD using the manufactures Diagnostic software (run extended test)
Replace the SATA cable from your HDD
Plug the SATA cable to another SATA port on the motherboard

[Los Santos Pedestrian]

QUOTE (Stinky12 @ Tuesday, Aug 28 2012, 16:43)

Do you remember what's the last thing you did when it happened, like ran software updates, add a new hardware, etc? Does it only happen while play online or happens also while offline? Does it only do this when playing games?

No, I don't remember.

I haven't tried it in an offline game yet; I'll probably edit this when I do.

Yes, it only happens when playing games. I never have the FPS problem while browsing the internet or anything.

My safe bet is that it's the fault of the CPU - it's weak and dated, even in 2007. I'd replace it here and now, but it's a Socket AM2 processor, and finding one that's compatible with it will take a while. I'll also use the method you provided. Thanks.

[Carl CJ Johnsons Brother Brian]

start-> run-> type-> msconfig and press enter-> press services tab-> check "hide all microsoft services" box-> uncheck all service boxes-> press "startup" tab-> uncheck all startup items-> press apply. Hope this help you.

EDIT: Oh, I almost forgot. Restart your PC after this.

This post has been edited by Carl CJ Johnsons Brother Brian on Tuesday, Aug 28 2012, 22:16