Vista - Serious System Lag, 51%-100% usage at idle, Driver Related?

So, I just updated from windows Vista Ultimate 32bit to 64bit. I also upgraded my memory recently from 2gb to 4gb though i don't see how that would factor into this issue considering the ram is perfectly capable for my motherboard.

The issue is I'm seeing huge spikes in my system idle process. My computer will go from nominal performance to around 50-100% usage. My cursor lags and trying to navigate menus is impossible. The really annoying thing is that it was running alright yesterday but today it's kicked off my internet (it was working) and now it's practically unresponsive. I've scrolled through similar topics concerning vista 64bit but i haven't seen any other person's issue that looked similar to mine.

I've tried updating my drivers using a memory stick, downloading the chipset, graphics card, sound, and various other drivers on my laptop and then installing them on my desktop since i can't get the thing on the internet, but to no avail. My onboard lan refuses to connect to even my modem hooked-up directly, much less through my router. Sometimes it will act like it's at least connected to the router but i cant get to the router configuration utility through 192.168.1.1 (it's a linksys router) which makes me think that the drivers i used to update the motherboard LAN weren't compatible with vista64 even though the site i downloaded them from the marvel yukon site saying that they were compatible with vista64.

I don't have onboard hdmi audio, or video, i do have spdif. On a related thread there was a result where someone turned off hdmi audio and that fixed their performance issue, but that wont work for me.

What process, if any, does Task Manager pinpoint as being responsible for the processor utilisation?

"System Idle" is the image that keeps the processor(s) busy when there is nothing else to do, so by itself that's not a problem.

Hi Fractoman,

This may help. Yesterday I started with a clean install of 32bit vista ultimate...too shakey. I re-formatted and installed vista x64 ultimate, liked it so I installed Dreamweaver CS3 and after that my cpu usage shot up to a constant 50+%, I didn't like that at all, so I re-formatted again installed vista x64 this time I'm gonna try DW MX2004 and fireworks CS3.

My point is it may not be a driver issue but any install. But on my PCs, if I'm not running anything then the cpu should be 1%-5%.

How are you on security: I'd run some different scans for adware, malware, virus.
Every time I encountered a pc that suddenly got slow and laggy it's usually because of some scumware.

Could also be the security software itself...

~Lordbob

H2SO4,

Found my external was being accessed by my processor during idle process, couldn't find out why. I'm assuming my driver on the thing isn't nice with a 64bit OS (probably should update that). I unplugged it and now I'm not seeing any more performance spikes.

kem,

I have AVG Pro running on my computer, always has kept my OS nice and clean. I ran a scan and found nothing, like i expected. I did a fresh reformat of my internal hard drive when i installed Vista 64bit leaving my necessary documents and files on my external.

P.S.

The network issue seemed to be related to some services that had turned themselves off at the last system update (don't know why an update would do that). Doing a Run on services.msc showed that my wlan and wired lan connections had been disabled from system boot processes. Reset them to automatic and now everything's running smoothly.

Thanks for posting what you found. Good to know.