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[Shinotsa]

(Pre-post edit: Thanks in advance for any help, and sorry for this wall of text. I've been elsewhere for advice but I get the same "Update your graphics drivers" answers without any real suggestions. Been to best buy and talked a bit with the geek squad guy there and he just jumped at my suggestion that it was a hard drive issue and pointed me to the most expensive ones there. So I figured I know at least ONE place where everyone is helpful AND knowledgable. Thanks again)

Heya everyone, while I was on vacation seeing some friends one of them who was getting kicked out of his house decided to give me his home built (in 2009) gaming PC since he recently had picked up a new one. It works well, and even runs some games that it only meets the minimum requirements for at fairly high fps. Overall I'm pretty happy with this machine, I'm certainly not going to complain about a free gaming rig. However, it seems to be having some trouble.


Info
OS: Vista 64 bit
Processor: Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Quad CPU    Q6600  @ 2.40GHz (4 CPUs), ~2.4GHz
Memory: 6gb RAM, 2x 1 GB DDR2, 2x 2GB DDR2
Graphics: 2x Nvidia Geforce 8800 GTS 512 (SLI)
HDD: WD 3200 00AAKS-00L9A

My issue is that (as far as I can tell) the machine has some sort of hard drive problem. Games such as Killing Floor, Magicka, Team Fortress 2 and Sonic Generations that have relatively small maps divided by loading screens don't lag at all. In fact the only issue I run into at all is when some of the prettier stuff happens in Generations (on high settings) which I barely meet the minimum requirements for.
The problem comes when playing games such as LOTRO, APB: Reloaded, or other games that have a very large map that must be loaded in piecemeal.  The game will maintain a fairly high FPS, 40-50, and then the screen will stutter for a moment. This stuttering is still present even at the lowest graphics settings, though in LOTRO options that reduce the number of textures being loaded in (such as disabling grass or other such things) reduces the severity of the stuttering, though only a minimal amount. The sound plays as normal while the screen freezes momentarily and continues. During these stutters the hard drive light flashes, though it may be a little ahead or behind. This, combined with the fact that applications take a while to open up and loading screens last longer than I'd expect leads me to believe that it may be a hard drive issue. Admittedly I don't know a damn thing about computers other than fiddling, troubleshooting, and weeks of reading up on what in the world could be wrong, so I'm open to suggestions.

Before anyone suggests it, I have updated drivers. I have tried not-so-updated drivers. For everything. I can safely assume it is not a driver issue. I have an updated version of DirectX, as well as every other download required by microsoft or by these games. There is no chance of spyware or viruses slowing the computer down, as I did a complete reinstall of windows to switch to the 64 bit version of vista when I first got the computer and bought an extra 4 gb of RAM for it. Before, when the computer had 4 gb of RAM (replaced two 1gb sticks) and a 32 bit version of vista the computer had the same problems.
I have tried my video cards separately and together, both with and without an SLI bridge, and the stuttering continued unabated. I have cleaned the computer thoroughly with whatever compressed air product they sell, and though the computer raises the temperature of the room quite a bit, it has good ventilation and the stuttering is present at the same level regardless of how long the computer has been on for.
The hard drive has been defragmented in the past two days
I do not know how to overclock, nor has this machine ever been overclocked.
I have run HD tune twice (while not in games) and scanned for errors in the hard drive. No bad sectors were discovered and everything else appeared normal, unless an access time of 15.9 ms is a problem since I couldn't find any data on that elsewhere.

Well that was a lot of text, but this problem has been going on since New Year's and despite a lot of effort I can't seem to fix the problem. If anyone with knowledge of computers can offer suggestions, advice, or ideas for what the problem could be or how I could pinpoint it. Also, since this computer was given to me I'm not quite sure what parts are going to need to be replaced soon, what is outdated, and what maintenance I'll need to do to keep it running until I need to replace it?

[Thief^]

The hard-disk is a bit slow (could be a 5400 rpm one). A typical 7200 rpm disk has an access time of "<9 ms". This could affect things.

[Fayrik]

I'm just gunna throw out a new direction and suggest the possibility that it's the processor.

Could you run some diagnostics or find some other symptoms? As that would help narrow things down.

I had a processor issue that I never bothered to fix - mostly because I noticed it AFTER I had bought a new computer, so the machine was redundant anyway... It was a single core, and the thing that really gave the error away was that it couldn't perform tasks while playing music.
My suggestion to emulate this situation would be to play music and run a virus scan/game, while restricting them both to the same processor core. Preferably once for each processor core. If the music can't play smoothly, then there might be a problem with the processor.

[Shinotsa]

I've tried playing music and running IE, games, and diagnostics all at the same time. I don't seem to be having the same problem as you. I talked to the friend recently and, after two weeks of him hearing me trying different things on this computer he gave me, he remembered that it had been riddled with every virus known to man and "knows" that one of them had damaged the HD. So I'm reformating it right now and I'll check it tomorrow evening when I get back from classes. Hopefully the problems will be fixed or greatly reduced, but if not can anyone suggest a way to fix it or, worst case scenario, a good HD that won't break a college student's wallet? I know I should probably just get a new rig at this point since it would likely be less expensive than making little upgrades now and then to the old thing, but I'm stubborn.

Thanks for the suggestions by the way. I was under the impression it was a 7200 rpm but that was from a quick google search so you're probably right. Anything else that could mess with the access speed?

[Thief^]

Bad sectors. It's something a hard-disk accumulates as it ages, and they slow it down by either having to have it retry reading the sector, or use a spare one (which doubles the seek/access time). Formatting the drive with a full (very slow) format sometimes resets the moved ones, but...

The last hard-disk I bought was a Samsung Spinpoint F3 500 GB. At the time it was one of the fastest 7200 rpm drives, and was single-platter, which makes it very reliable, quiet, very fast, and reduces seek times slightly. All wins.
But make sure you get a 7200 rpm (or higher!) disk if you do replace yours

[Telgin]

A failing hard drive can definitely have symptoms like that.  I've had more fail than is strictly reasonable.  Although most of the time it's more catastrophic and the system just BSoDs and won't boot back, failing to find the disk.

Depending on the failures though, it could just dramatically increase seek times, and depending on which files are in the bad sections could affect different things differently.  Reformatting and reinstalling the OS might help: I don't recall the specifics but I think that somewhere between the firmware in the HDD to the actual filesystem layer the OS will try to avoid the bad sectors.  Whether it does this during installation though I'm not positive.

You might want to look into testing the drive before replacing it though, or accusing it wrongly.  Go to the drive manufacturer's website and see if they have some sort of drive testing utility you can put on a floppy (lol) or a CD.  This should be able to tell you in short order if there are serious issues with the disk or if it's just messed up stuff in your installations somewhere.

[Shinotsa]

Popping on between classes to check suggestions for when I get home. Just looked at the western digital website on Telgin's suggestion and they have a diagnostic tool that looks promising. I scanned for bad sectors with the default windows scandisk but when it was finished it just booted the computer and I couldn't find the output file. Hopefully the WD download will reveal if this can be saved, or if there's anything wrong with it at all. Gah, computers make no damn sense to me. I'm in medicine. You don't look at a person after weeks of observation and say "Well it could be your liver, kidneys, brain, heart, or anus. I'm leaning toward brain, but anus is also looking pretty good."

Also I'll look into that Samsung or newer 7200's, but the price of them is hilariously high. Since I can't get a good price after the flood, can anyone tell me how much they got their hard drives for? I'd like to know when the prices are back to being somewhat reasonable.

[shadenight123]

now that is not an "old" gaming computer. i have seen far older ones.
i'm going to suggest the monitor if it's a desktop. it might be that the resolution is not adequate, or so on.
as second, i'd suggest a DELL visit, they have this tool for checking out pc's problems. (sure yours is not a dell, but i doubt the program is going to be that picky).
if it is picky, you can try looking at the heating through speedfan, if it's a heat problem.
if it's not, maybe it could be a connection problem.
if still it's not, then it's the hard drive. but if formatting it doesn't work in making it better i'm at a loss. maybe someplace was scratched or similar?

[Tellemurius]

Actually im hitting the SLI as the problem. SLI tries to synchronize multiple cards to pool resources, while this helps some time it will cause video stuttering. This is usually prominent cause
A: bad driver support, it really depends if the companies took time to utilize the SLI features
B: too damn old, if your graphics are struggling just for low settings, sometimes combining helps but it seems your hardware is too outdated now for that to matter anymore

[Shinotsa]

I have tried my video cards separately and together, both with and without an SLI bridge,

Using the Western Digital utility I just decided to screw it all and write zeroes. A whole lot of waiting later and the problem seems to be all but gone, and what little is left I can't tell if it's the game itself or my connection since mmo's can always hiccup a little. I redownloaded the utility and scanned. It says that there are no bad sectors, nor anything else wrong with my hd. However under hard drive health it says "Warning." Now uh, other than running the exe there weren't really any instructions for this utility so I'm not entirely sure what that means, but hell, I'm sure it won't affect me for a few months. Expect me asking how to build a cheap, efficient gaming rig in a half a year when my computer bursts into flames, but other than that I can honestly say I'm considering it fixed and I appreciate all the suggestions and help.

Cheers!

[Tellemurius]

I meant the cards are too old even if you separated them but seems you just had corrupted sector problems.

[TheLazyPool]

You can get SmartMonTools here or get some other program from this list. They might give you a little more useful info than 'Warning' by showing you the S.M.A.R.T. data of your HDD.

[Shinotsa]

Heh, funny development. And by funny I mean I'm about to see if I can trust my computer since it's right next to my window. One day after it was doing updates and restarting in the night it started BSODing on me. I just got fed up and defragged, wrote zeroes, and tested to see what would cause it to crash. Thought it was games at first but then it happened just while I was looking at some store pages on steam. Well I got fed up and wrote zeroes (two passes) and about five minutes after starting up the damn then blue screened again.

So what could be causing this? It can't be a software issue since it happened both before and after a complete reformat. Same goes for a virus. Did my hard drive just kick the bucket? And if so is anyone aware of how long it'll be until hard drive prices drop? (if they haven't already) And I'm not the least bit interested in a SSD, so let's not consider them when it comes to prices. Just looking at them makes me cringe.

[Tellemurius]

Heh, funny development. And by funny I mean I'm about to see if I can trust my computer since it's right next to my window. One day after it was doing updates and restarting in the night it started BSODing on me. I just got fed up and defragged, wrote zeroes, and tested to see what would cause it to crash. Thought it was games at first but then it happened just while I was looking at some store pages on steam. Well I got fed up and wrote zeroes (two passes) and about five minutes after starting up the damn then blue screened again.

So what could be causing this? It can't be a software issue since it happened both before and after a complete reformat. Same goes for a virus. Did my hard drive just kick the bucket? And if so is anyone aware of how long it'll be until hard drive prices drop? (if they haven't already) And I'm not the least bit interested in a SSD, so let's not consider them when it comes to prices. Just looking at them makes me cringe.

those prices won't drop until the third quarter or at least till summer, production isn't kicking in fast enough and inventories are dwindling, worse is that ram is going up soon too.

[Shinotsa]

Hmmm alright... well that's that then. Thanks for all the help everybody. I suppose I'll pick this thing apart, sell it for parts, split it with the original owner and wait until I can get a Caviar Black (or whatever's good at that point) for 60 bucks rather than 150.