Video Stutter -- Hard Drive Related?

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Wolfe

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Notice anything odd about this animated GIF of our little blue planet?:
http://img227.imageshack.us/img227/6508/globerotatestutterha0.gif

No?

How about this one?:
http://img227.imageshack.us/img227/4585/globerotatestutter2is8.gif

I've been afflicted with this stutter on all of the various incarnations and rebirths of my PC, for as long as I can remember. It's worse on some games, and barely perceptible (gone entirely?) on others, so it's remained a persistent deciding factor in which games I play, and I really wish it wasn't.

It doesn't have anything to do with overall performance, because if it afflicts a certain game, it will remain just as much of a problem no matter how low you turn the graphics down. In fact, it affects me on programs as (relatively) simple as the SNES emulator ZSNES.

No, it has to do with something else, and I had a mini-breakthrough today when I noticed that my hard drive activity light on the front of my case blinks about once per second, sometimes twice, even if I'm not doing anything at all. By tapping my finger on the desk to the tempo of the blinks and turning to watch the screen, I've determined that each stutter happens about a quarter of a second after each blink, at the same tempo.

I've gone through a bunch of things today, including reducing the amount of services XP uses, turning off file indexing, messing with the BIOS, updating my graphics card drivers, updating my motherboard chipset drivers, defragmenting, disabling the pagefile and then re-enabling it after a restart to make sure it's unfragmented, setting the pagefile to 2.5GB, making sure Autoplay is off on all drives, disabling my on-board sound chip, making sure UDMA is enabled on all IDE devices, and experimenting with vSync...

...and the only thing I've accomplished is reducing the amount of time it takes for XP to boot up.

My drive shouldn't be on its way out, because it's fairly new, and isn't causing any other problems or noises. Also, this has happened for as long as I can remember, on a few different drives. Plus, I don't believe that hard drive speed/performance is the issue, because it really shouldn't have to tick away every second within an already-loaded area in a first-person-shooter game, much less load anything more than once in a 2.5MB SNES game.

My only clue is that vSync makes the stuttering worse in ZSNES, causing my CPU usage to skyrocket. (I've just been using ZSNES as my test program)

I've had enough of this, and I'm hoping for a solution. Any ideas?
 
These gifs stutter for me as well, I'm not sure if they weren't meant to be like that though.

About your stutter: do you have any temperature monitoring tool running? These things tend to interrupt actions regularly when checking the sensors.
 
There is a stutter built into the first gif. Frames 5 and 15 last twice as long as the rest.
 
Like Daan said, the frame timing is uneven in the file. The first one has 20 frames, all but two (5 and 14)are .1 second, the two are .3. The second is the same except for having 22 frames, the two long ones (5 and 15) are .2 second.

If I were guessing, since the two images have the same total time, I'd say you're trying to build 24 evenly spaced frames. Even if I set the timing to all frames at .1 second, there are a couple of frames that the animation goes too far, like frames were missing. My modified even-framed images are linked here so you can see. The animation still skips because of apparently missing frames, but it doesn't pause. The skip is less evident in the second one, because only one frame is missing at each skip, where the first one has two.

http://img176.imageshack.us/my.php?image=globerotatestutter2is8ejk8.gif

http://img237.imageshack.us/my.php?image=globerotatestutterha0evvb4.gif

As to what this has to do with the rest of your PC, I can't even hazard a guess of any kind. On these images, the stutter is built into the file, so they're playing like they set up to play.
 
I should have been more clear. I downloaded a GIF of a rotating globe and edited those files myself to give them their stutter, illustrating what it is I'm talking about.

@The Interceptor: Are you talking about a Windows-based application, or motherboard-based tools, too?
 
Wolfe
I should have been more clear. I downloaded a GIF of a rotating globe and edited those files myself to give them their stutter, illustrating what it is I'm talking about.
Click to expand...

Ah, that changes things!!! :)

My laptop does this when I'm on wireless, but not wired. It gives a little half-second pause every 3 or 4 seconds. I've never tried to t/s it because I don't do anything time-sensitive while connected wirelessly.

I don't remember where I saw it, but I've seen a utility that's supposed to report disk activity, what's being read, what's being written, which files and so on, but it would take me a bit to find it.


**** Switches to a Google window to search ****

OK. Found a couple of things on MS Technet, File Monitor and Process Monitor. File Monitor logs disk activity, Process Monitor can be set for disk only, but also logs Registry activity and running process behavior. Maybe these can give you some insight to what your periodic activity is.

I also found a couple of S.M.A.R.T. monitor utilities if you're worried about your drive health. Just Google "disk monitor" and take your pick.
 
I had this a while back too and I've got no real help to offer, I had to reformat & re-install in the end to totally eliminate it.

In Task Manager, I noticed that I was never dropping below 5% cpu usage and was getting spikes of 10% to 15% every 5 to 6 seconds.
Booting in safe mode, I was getting smaller spikes, but they were still there.
Killing processes one at a time killed windows a few times, but the stutter was still there.
After spending a few weeks trying to sort it out, I caved in & decided that trying to remember all my settings and passwords was less of a pain in the neck than getting rid of this stutter.
 
Wolfe
@The Interceptor: Are you talking about a Windows-based application, or motherboard-based tools, too?
Click to expand...
Both. I'm talking about something third party like Motherboard Monitor, or something similar the manufacturer of the mainboard provided. As you're experiencing a regularly appearing phenomenon that also writes to or reads from the HDD, it could well be a monitoring tool of some sort, that interrups the system regularly to get its work done.

Have you checked the task manager? You can let it show you the running processes, sorted after system load. Theoretically, it should show you a process jumping to the top every time the pc stalls. It's worth a try.

Regards
the Interceptor
 
wfooshee
OK. Found a couple of things on MS Technet, File Monitor and Process Monitor. File Monitor logs disk activity, Process Monitor can be set for disk only, but also logs Registry activity and running process behavior. Maybe these can give you some insight to what your periodic activity is.

I also found a couple of S.M.A.R.T. monitor utilities if you're worried about your drive health. Just Google "disk monitor" and take your pick.
Click to expand...

Thank you!!!! File Monitor was just what I needed to point me in the right direction. :) 👍 👍

Exactly every second, two specific files were being created yet getting a name clash, created and clashing, created and clashing, etc...well, it turned out those two files were fservice.exe and sservice.exe, well-known to be components of the ProRat trojan.

SpyBot detected ProRat and told me that it had fixed it, but File Monitor still showed that the creating and clashing was taking place. Sure enough, I ran SpyBot again, and it detected ProRat again, still claiming to have defeated it upon completion. But it didn't. It never did, and it never has, and now that I think about it, I've been "deleting" ProRat every time I've ran SpyBot. :irked:

The only solution I could find was to go to the actual ProRat website, download the program, and use its built-in removal tool to disinfect my computer. Worked like a charm. The stutter is gone. :D

I'd give you +Rep, wfooshee, but GTP won't let me. :(

Agent Smith
I had this a while back too and I've got no real help to offer, I had to reformat & re-install in the end to totally eliminate it.

In Task Manager, I noticed that I was never dropping below 5% cpu usage and was getting spikes of 10% to 15% every 5 to 6 seconds.
Booting in safe mode, I was getting smaller spikes, but they were still there.
Killing processes one at a time killed windows a few times, but the stutter was still there.
Click to expand...

That sounds very similar to what I had. Download File Monitor from the link in wfooshee's post, and see if you get something that looks like this (the portion highlighted is one instance of the process):



If that's the case, try getting the ProRat tool from the ProRat website and using the removal tool (the icon shows a hard drive with a hand-held broom on it).

(thanks to Wikipedia for the link to the website)

the Interceptor
As you're experiencing a regularly appearing phenomenon that also writes to or reads from the HDD, it could well be a monitoring tool of some sort, that interrups the system regularly to get its work done.
Click to expand...

Seems you had no idea how right you were on that. :)




Thanks for the help, everyone. I'll keep File Monitor handy in case I catch ProRat again.
 
I had a very similar problem to you just a few months back, but there was a different solution to what yours is above.

My Hard Drive had a worrying loud hiccup. Afterwards, everything from videos to scrolling down the page in an internet browser would stutter, and games would be unplayable. After a week or two at looking at it, my father managed to come across the PC's Hard Drive was in a "limp home mode" (not sure where in Windows he found out). All he did was enabled full operation again, and BAM, everything was back to normal again. We figured in the end it was due to too many things plugged into the computer, thus making the Hard Drive operate improperly due to lack of power...
 
Not one single video posted on this forum works. I can't watch them. I'm using windows XP Pro, IE6. Can someone help, please.
 

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