PC stalling semi regular for 5 to 10 seconds

Blueblur

PowerSpec G225 while using photo editor or playing music will freeze for 5 seconds or so then resume operation. i can hear hardware clicking then operations resume. What might this be and can it be fixed?

TSRosieV

Welcome to the forums Blueblur! Does this hardware click come through headphones/speakers or do you hear it from the computer itself?

Blueblur

It comes from the computer. seems like it is catching up with background processing.

Blueblur

the audio will buzz, stop, buzz again then the computer does its computing clicks

TSRosieV

I see. Have you tried running a disk check to your disk health? To do this, open a new File Explorer window (click Windows key + E) then click This PC. Right-click on your OS (C:) drive and then click Properties.

In the Properties window, click the Tools tab and then click Check.

If your PC thinks everything is running smoothly, it'll show a window stating that you don't need to scan the drive at all. You can proceed by clicking Scan drive below this.

The check disk will begin. Depending on the size of your drive, this process could take anywhere from a few minutes to an hour. If everything checks out, you'll receive a notification that no errors were found. If it does find errors, it will attempt to fix them.

Blueblur

Thanks for your help, i ran the  scan and it found no errors. any other ideas, i hope.

TSKyleH

I understand you notice this mostly with photo editing and music, the freeze could also be memory related. Once thing I can suggest is running a memory diagnostic, this can be done by doing a search in the bottom right, and clicking memory diagnostic. This will ask to run a test the next time the computer is restarted. 

Blueblur

Memory diagnostic found no errors. if nothing else i am learning more about my PC.  i also had this stall happen just while being online. is 16GB ram enough, is there processing settings involved or available?

Dean

I have this same issue.  have purchased 3 diff powerspec pcs in the past 6 months.  on two of them the freezes happen for about 5 seconds and then it catxches back up.  on the third the freezing does not come back and I am returning the pc as its within the past 15 days that I bot it.   sounds to me like there is a faulty part they are using building these.  if someone can figure it out it would be AWESOME.

TSAustinM

Do you have other applications running in the background when you using the photo editor program, also which program are you running to edit the photos? It may have a standard hardware requirement to run at optimal performance. 

Blueblur

no other apps that i am running in the background. 
as i stated above this has happened while just playing music with windows media player so i don't think it is my photo editor app which by the way i checked the requirements and this G225 pc is good to handle Canon's Digital Photo Professional 4. 
Now that someone else has posted the same problem, I'm thinking it needs to be investigated specifically by tech support and solved. Im sure Micro Center wants to support their own products with warranty against this type of problem.   Please

PowerSpec_MichaelB

Now that we've ruled out background applications and potential third party software conflict, we can move on to additional troubleshooting options. I see that your G225 was purchased back in late November, how long have you been experiencing this stalling? Do you recall any recent updates or hardware changes? Do you have any external drives plugged into the system? If the issue started after a recent update or hardware change, I would recommend rolling back those updates and restoring the original hardware configuration.

If you have external storage plugged in (hard drives, flash drives, SD cards, etc) I would recommend removing them temporarily to see if the stalling goes away. What you are describing sounds like an IO error, especially with the "clicking" noise, however the lack of a mechanical disk in this system has me concerned as nothing should be clicking. If it's constant, it would lead me to believe it's a fan bearing, but the fact that the clicking only occurs when the stalling occurs is worrisome.

Once we have additional information from the troubleshooting steps above, we can further narrow down the issue.

Blueblur

I thought maybe i figured out why the lockup was happening when i realized i am using my mechanical hard drive to store pics and music and that would be clicking while photo editing or listening to my music. So i tried putting a folder of pic on the C drive and then did some editing of those pics. The lockup still happens without the clicking. Also i reconfirmed that the lockup happens when all I'm doing is listening to an audio stream online. The audio locks in a electo buzz, the pc hums like it is thinking then audio resumes. My thought is some kind of memory buffer gets full and it has to dump or regroup to continue. 

TSTonyV

Try booting the computer in safe mode and testing the photo editing and music then. 

Safe mode will disable all non-essential Windows services and drivers. If the issue does not occur while in safe mode, it's most likely a software or driver related issue. If it does occur while in safe mode, it's most likely there's either a corruption with Windows itself, or we're looking at a hardware issue. 

PowerSpec_MichaelB

Blueblur said:

I thought maybe i figured out why the lockup was happening when i realized i am using my mechanical hard drive to store pics and music and that would be clicking while photo editing or listening to my music. So i tried putting a folder of pic on the C drive and then did some editing of those pics. The lockup still happens without the clicking. Also i reconfirmed that the lockup happens when all I'm doing is listening to an audio stream online. The audio locks in a electo buzz, the pc hums like it is thinking then audio resumes. My thought is some kind of memory buffer gets full and it has to dump or regroup to continue. 

Is this old hard drive connected to the new PowerSpec at all? Even if you are not actually accessing the drive, it can experience an IO fault simply by being connected to the system. Anything that halts the bus as a whole will cause the entire system to hang. If this drive is connected, I would recommend restoring the system to its original configuration and trying again.