System Randomly Pausing

I have been running Vista x64 on one of my Desktops, and I'm having trouble with the entire system pausing or not responding at random times. The pause lasts anywhere from a few seconds up to 10 seconds. The keyboard doesn't respond but I can move the mouse cursor (but not click). If I continue to type during a pause, when it un-pauses everything I type appears. If I have media playing (either audio or video) it pauses aswell. I have tried everything I can think of to fix the issue, from disabling services such as indexing, superfetch etc, and adjusting the power usage settings. I have noticed that right before the system starts to respond my hard-drive clicks like its starting to spin up. I'm tempted to switch back to using XP because of this problem. Any ideas? (Note: it even paused twice while I was typing this).

My System Info:
MS Vista x64 Home Premium,
Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 (2.4Ghz)
Asus P5W DH Deluxe Mainboard
4 Gbs Corsair PC5300 Ram
Nvidia 8800GTS 640Mb
Creative SoundBlaster X-Fi Platinum
Compro TV-Mate Gold Plus

try running task manager (ctrl alt del) and see if a process is hogging.

you might also look at resource monitor under performance

good luck

I faced the Pause Issue on my only Nforce 4 Motherboard.
It was because i used Nvidias IDE drivers instead of the default ones.

Use the default ones provided by microsoft,do not install the controller drivers that came on the Motherboard CD.
Let us know.

Cheers for the replys,

gezeer, I just ran the resource manager (and task manager) for a few hours, and ironically I didn't get a single pause. But as soon as I closed it the pauses came right back within a few minutes. Probably just a coincidence though.

Asky, my mainboard uses an intel 975X chipset with ICH7 controller not an nvidia based one, and the drivers I’m using are the default ones that Vista installs.