Problem With My PC

BigBoss

BigBoss

Your Local Scrub
Alright, let me start from the beginning. Originally I thought this problem pertained particularly to Fallout 1 and 2, but after time playing other games, I figured myself wrong. Several months ago, I was playing Fallout (1). It had been awhile (three, for months), and I had just reinstalled it with the FIX'T. So first, I start to watch the intro. About 8, maybe 10 or 12 seconds at the most the intro starts to become extremely choppy where I can't even handle it, and another thing would happen that I didn't take into notice until a few weeks later (we will get to that soon). So I figured maybe it was the intro, nothing serious maybe something went wrong with this particular installation, and continued on with my game. Plays fine for the first hour, maybe two hours in, then its starts acting choppy. About 2, maybe 3 minutes after this as I'm about to exit out of Fallout all together the lag spike ends and I continue playing. Maybe another 30 minutes later it happens again, for around the same amount of time. Now this isn't some kind of serious problem which prevents me from playing these games all together, but nevertheless it is a problem. Everytime I would play Fallout (1), I would skip the intro, and every 30 minutes I would receive a 2-3 minute long lag spike. I figured, maybe I did something wrong with FIX'T. So I made a thread about the problem and even got help and recommendations from Sduibek (including re installing it, making modifications, etc). After nothing worked, I figured "you know what, let me try to play it without FIX'T". So I uninstall FIX'T and begin to test run the intro... same thing. So I play the game... same thing.

So then I decide its most likely just Fallout. So I start playing Fallout 2. Same exact thing with the intro and game play. Then I decide that maybe its my copy (I have the Classic Collection). So not only do I re-order the Classic Collection, but I order the original Fallout and Fallout 2. The extra Classic Collection copy didn't work and after re-working the original Fallout games to get them to install correctly on my Windows 8, they didn't work either.

So I tried a few other games and had the same problem. Then I noticed every time the game would start to lag, my laptop would suddenly and quickly get hot and the fan would start spinning extremely fast. What could this possibly be. I've looked online and it doesn't have anything to do with my graphics card, or any thing related. I have no idea what to do. I've even bought those shitty "computer cleaner" programs and those didn't help. I know its not because my memory is full or because my computer is to slow, because my computer is a Windows 8 with a Core I7, and my memory is 904GB of which 784 are free (not even 20% of my memory is full, and most of what is full is used to operate the computers basic needs.

So what could this be? Any ideas on what I should do?
 
Take this with a grain of salt, as I'm basing my assumptions purely off of experience, and not any concrete information. But what you have reminds me an awful lot of what happened to me about 2 years ago. It first appeared as a series of choppiness issues with FO2, which I quickly dismissed as a potential error withing killap's RP, but I began to notice other, generally sluggish responses from my PC in general. I tried running FONV under the assumption that by playing a much more modern game that would somehow prove something, but while it seemed to run without any issue, I did see some other (in FONV's case, very minor) issues slightly resembling what I had with FO2. I kept investigating how deep the problems went for a couple days while searching for answers on the site, and some of the advice I got then I'll repeat now, that is, "We can't tell you anything just based on your description. It really helps if you can provide us with [various system logs]." Ultimately, I took it to Fry's, and they quickly diagnosed that my OS had a corruption. There was nothing that could be done other than completely wipe my system clean and reinstall everything from scratch, because the problem was with the OS, the software backbone of the entire PC. It couldn't have been any worse unless it was some kind of hardware defect in the Motherboard, requiring me to build an entirely new PC because that's just how important that part of the system is.

Is your problem an OS corruption? I can't say that it is. I'm just saying that what you described reminded me of the series of incidents that led to me finding out the issue with mine was its OS corruption. Nowadays systems run so much more efficiently than they used to, that you can go for years without defragmenting your hard drive, and your system won't detect any pressing need to run disk defrag whatsoever, so that will most likely not make any difference for you. Presumably you've already got an anti-virus that has found nothing, so while scanning your system again is never a bad thing, that most likely will not make any difference. Keep searching, but if you exhaust your "investigate for free" options, just take it to a place that works on PCs, and they should be able to diagnose the problem in a matter of minutes (at worst, hours). At least then, you'll finally know for sure what you've got to do.
 
If i understand you correctly this happens even if you don't play games, if so:

Try to run Ubuntu (it's linux distro and it's free) from an usb stick, you don't even have to install it, you can run it straight from the usb stick, so you won't have to needlessly uninstall your windows. Check if you have the same problem with it too.
 
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BigBoss said:
I've even bought those shitty "computer cleaner" programs and those didn't help.
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If this is part of your troubleshooting process you should def. take snapslavs advice and take it in to a computer repair specialist.

Although I do think those guys usually play robot unicorn attack all day while wiping customer HDs and reinstalling their OSs since that solves everything but hardware faults.
 
I've so far had a couple of people tell me it was an overheating problem.

I've tried defragmenting, purchasing cleaner programs, going through my files and deleting everything I never used or wasn't vital to my computer, all of that. I've tried everything and short of a total system reboot I have no idea what else to do (that doesn't involve me spending more cash that is. Not that I'm not willing to spend cash to fix my shit, just that I would prefer to get through this without spending money on it).
 
Like I said, defragmenting your system hasn't been a solution for major performance issues for many years, because of how much technology has advanced. Good that you tried it, but it was highly, highly unlikely to accomplish anything.

Wanting to do everything within your power to fix it without spending any money if at all possible is perfectly normal. It's generally older generations (people who have next-to-zero understanding of electronics) who "ought" to immediately take a PC to a place to have them fix it. But while I was going out of my way to underline that my advice was purely hearsay, I DO strongly suggest you take it to a shop, because I'm pretty sure you've got a major software corruption. And when that happens, that means completely uninstalling said software, wiping it from your drive, and reinstalling it. When the problem is so prevalent no matter what you're running, all signs point to the software in question being your OS, and that means staring all over. =/

So, assuming you have an external with enough space to hold everything on your system, get straight to backing up your system, then take it to a place to have them scan it. In the event they find out it is indeed a [insert ANYTHING that will require a reformat and re-installation of your system] you're all set to have them do that; you don't need to take your system back home and begin a backup process, and you don't have to pay them to back it up for you (which always adds extra cost). So you save your time and money this way. At the end of the day, you gotta weigh how much completely alleviating any further headaches are "worth" to you, and I'd say they're worth $100-200 for a couple years of never having them again.
 
Yeah. Its only when I'm playing games, but everything else runs absolutely fine. Maybe when I feel ready I'll reboot my system and if that doesn't solve it I will take it to a shop.

Its gonna be sad deleting my huge porn collection :troll: :).
 
I'd take AskWuzzup's advice and try booting Ubuntu or LinuxMint from a USB stick. That should give you an idea whether it's a hardware problem or a software problem.

If that doesn't get you anywhere, backup your important data and reformat. Personally I like to reformat every couple of years no matter what.
 
Here is my take on it, If the fan is always spinning up to a higher RPM when the incidents are occuring it would be well worth grabbing of of the various temputure monitoring programs and observing the results whilst replicating one of these incidents.

The problems listed make it seem like it could very well be some form of thermal throttling on behalf of either the cpu or gpu, as the temperature rises and processor will run on a lower clock setting to reduce the thermal load.
 
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