Intermittent lag in windows response

[paugie]

I am experiencing intermittent lag in the response of my computer. There are times when I've typed a few words in MS Word and nothing comes out until, say 3 to 5 seconds later when all that I have typed suddenly bursts into the page I'm typing.
Windows Explorer doesn't exhibit that behavior though. When I press "Windows+E" it comes out quite speedily.
There are times when programs start up right away, sometimes it takes a few seconds before it seems to realize that I have asked it to start.
My previous machine did not exhibit this behavior. It was based on an ECS KT400 chipset mobo and an Athlon 2100+ T-Bred-B and 512mb of DDR333 RAM.

My system consists of
Sempron 2800+ at stock speed
Epox 8KRAI (Via KT600)
512 Mb PQI DDR400
Lite-On DVD ROM master on IDE Channel
Lite-On DVD Writer master on 2nd IDE Channel
Maxtor 160GB MaxPlus9 w/ 8mb cache on SATA Channel
Abit Siluro MX400 64 mb video card
Running in WindowsXP SP1

Any reasons why? It is annoying.

 

[P5-133XL]

I'd be checking bad Software, or for Spyware/Virus. Run one or more anti-spyware programs (Adaware/Spybot/Giant). Check your machine for any virus infections. If those don't do it then run MSConfig and disable all programs that autostart with your machine and see if that helps. If so, then add them back in one at a time till the symptoms re-occur. then you'll know what is causing the problem.

 

[Tea]

As P5 says, look for a software cause. But first, if you like, disconnect all your IDE devices bar only the hard drive and see if the behaviour remains the same. If it does, you can be virtually certain that it's a software problem.

From there on, look for three classes of program:

1: Spyware
2: Startup junkware (MS Office startup, Realplayer, Quicktime tasks, Kodak camera software, etc, etc, etc. All of this is junk, serves no useful purpose, and needs to be cleaned out of your startup.
3: Viruses.

The rule is simple: "if in doubt, take it out". Be ruthless.It's the only way.

 

[P5-133XL]

An easier way of dealing with Tea's doubts about your IDE devices is simply check your event logs. Any HW related timeouts should appear there as errors.

 

[Bozo]

After cleaning out and add-ware and what not, go to this site to tune up your XP install. It's 165 pages of excellent information on tweaking XP.

http://www.tweakguides.com/XPTC.html


Bozo :mrgrn:

 

[paugie]

I am impressed by the speed of the responses. Thanks a lot. Will heed your suggestions and get back to you.

 

[mubs]

A very common cause of this behaviour is the Indexing service in Win XP. Disable it in Control Panel --> Administrative Tools --> Services.