Member Avatar for Bava

I have an Asrock K7S8XE, 512 Mb, Radeon 9600PRO. I used to play games normally, but this week a strange thing happen. It start to lag in games that it never did before, turning the game unplayable. I've tested another graphic card, a Geforce 6800, and it did the same behavior with a better card. Well, i think it is not a graphic card issue, or it will be solved with the new card. I thought it could be the processor, cause i used to overclock it, but is it possible this kind of damage? It shouldn't work or not?... :confused: ...I have replaced the PSU but it was not it. Maybe the motherboard... Someone could help me? Thank you very much!

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  • Latest Post Latest Post by davidmethew

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Two different outcomes in this thread point to two different root causes. ’s full reinstall cured the problem, which strongly suggests software/driver or filesystem corruption in that case. ’s persistent hangs after formatting point toward hardware. The single, important symptom to focus on is the burst of disk activity that coincides with the stutter: when the HDD LED floods while frames drop, the fault is much more likely to be I/O/paging or storage/controller failure than a pure GPU problem.

A concise, prioritized checklist of practical checks and tools:

  • Back up important data immediately.
  • Check Event Viewer (Start → Run → eventvwr.msc) for Disk/Ntfs/atapi errors and time stamps matching the hangs.
  • Inspect SMART data (CrystalDiskInfo on Windows, smartctl on Linux) and run the HDD maker’s bootable diagnostic.
  • Run chkdsk /r C: (will take time) to find/relocate bad sectors.
  • Run MemTest86+ for several full passes to rule out RAM-induced page faults.
  • Monitor real-time I/O and process activity (Task Manager + Sysinternals Process Explorer or Resource Monitor) to see which process is causing heavy reads/writes.
  • Boot a Linux/USB live environment to check whether the problem appears outside Windows (isolates OS vs hardware).
  • Restore BIOS defaults and remove any overclock; check CPU/GPU temps with SpeedFan/HWMonitor and look for bulging/leaking capacitors on the motherboard.
  • If suspicion remains, try a known-good PSU, swap the drive, or test the motherboard/drive on another system.

A simple isolation flow: backup → chkdsk + SMART → memtest → reproduce from a live USB → test with another PSU or drive. Reinstalls can mask failing hardware temporarily; persistent hangs after a clean OS install usually implicate HDD, RAM, PSU, or motherboard. Helpful diagnostic snippets for follow-ups are Event Viewer excerpts, chkdsk output, SMART report, memtest logs, idle/load temperatures, BIOS and driver versions. This approach builds on ’s CPU/process suggestions and ’s reminder that very low-end CPUs/GPUs can be bottlenecks, while keeping the primary focus on the I/O evidence.

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Member Avatar for davedefeet

I have an Asrock K7S8XE, 512 Mb, Radeon 9600PRO. I used to play games normally, but this week a strange thing happen. It start to lag in games that it never did before, turning the game unplayable. I've tested another graphic card, a Geforce 6800, and it did the same behavior with a better card. Well, i think it is not a graphic card issue, or it will be solved with the new card. I thought it could be the processor, cause i used to overclock it, but is it possible this kind of damage? It shouldn't work or not?... :confused: ...I have replaced the PSU but it was not it. Maybe the motherboard... Someone could help me? Thank you very much!

Have you checked CPU usage? (with and without a game running)

How many proccesses are running?

Have you installed any new software recently?

Are the games "online games" ?

Maybe you've picked up some nasty spyware; or your pc is doing something in the background that you don't know about!

A bit more information about your PC can be accessed from start>run and type dxdiag
This will allow you to run tests on your system such as 3D tests, and save the results to a text file, these could be useful.

Cheers

Member Avatar for Bava

I installed microsoft anti-spyware, and found nothing. Have also checked the CPU usage. The directX diagnose was perfect! I also installed Sisoft Sandra and run some tests. Nothing, everything seems to be ok in the tests results. The issue occured when the computer deals with some 3D graphics, and the HD light start flashing, causing the lag, like a hiccup. So i opted to format it all in a final and desperate try. I've made some data backup first! and everything is working fine now, just like before. Anyway, thank you very much for your help, Bava.

Member Avatar for karldaniel

Hi Guys, same problem with this one, I can't seem to play the games I used to play, I already formatted my hard disk but I still have the same problem my SPECS are

Asus P5VDC-MX
Celeron 2.6
GeForce FX5500 256 mb
1 gig DDR2
120 gig HD Maxtor

I can't play games like NFS or even NBA Live 2008, I start the game but after a few seconds the PC just hangs I need to reboot again to recover.

Please help just ran out of ideas...Thanks in advance.

Member Avatar for davidmethew

Celeron 2.6 is not a Gaming processor.

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