Weird laptop : Stuttering sound, high FPS, 2-5 second freezes upon file loadings.

[Nekyo Bot]

I've got this laptop over a year a go and I've never really used it. But now that my PC has literally died I've been forced to use it for every day stuff. I'm not much of a gamer, I'm playing league of legends from time to time, osu! and some games on steam. So I've noticed this really weird problem happening after a decent while.

The laptop I'm using is HP Pavilion dv6-3033sa and the specs are :
Microprocessor 2.7 GHz AMD Phenom II Dual-Core Processor N620
Microprocessor Cache Level 2 cache 2 MB
Memory 4 GB DDR3 (2 x 2048 MB)
Memory Max Supports up to 8 GB DDR3 memory
Video Graphics ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5470 Graphics
Display 39.6 cm (15.6") diagonal High-Definition LED HP BrightView Display (1366 x 768)
Hard Drive 320 GB SATA Hard Disk Drive 7200 rpm

Also I'm using window 7 64 bit ultimate.

The problem I've noticed and causes are :
- File loading - Whenever I'm opening a folder for a first time in 5-10 minute span, screen literally freezes for about 5 seconds then it loads up.

- Stuttering sounds - Some games like "Osu!", "Orcs must die" or "League of legends" are having heavy stuttering while playing sounds. I've also had problems with playing the music with audio players (Windows media player, iTunes, Aimp 2) but I've managed to solve music playback by increasing the "Cache" for audio files in Aimp 2. While the stuttering stopped I've noticed that it takes about 3-5 seconds for mp3 files to actually start.
Also in "Osu!" which is soft of music-rhytm based(if you've played StepMania then you know "this" soft of a game) game I've noticed that whenever I'm switching to different song at first it's stuttering a lot more(roughly about 3-10 seconds of heavy sound stuttering) then it slowly "Decays" and eventually stops.


- Freezes while accessing the files - Some games I'm playing are having really high FPS during the game play but then I'm getting heavy frame files during the moment when animations are loaded/used for first time in game session. It seems as the game is waiting for the sprite files.

Okay, now that I've listed my problems I'll tell you what I've tried :
- Different graphics card drivers - I've went probably through all the drivers provided by ATI over last 3 years. Sadly no changes over there.

- Clean format - I've managed to reinstall and format whole hard drive 3 times during last 2 months. Still no changes.

- De-fragmenting - I'm de-fragmenting my hard drive every week.

- Cleaning the laptop from dust - Apparently high temperatures can affect graphics and sound devices heavily : therefore I've cleaned my laptop and temperatures hardly come higher than 65C*.

- Using different drivers than provided by HP for all the network devices etc. Not much progress over there, but ethernet card seems to be working a lot better now.

- Turning off my wi-fi device - I've heard that might be the cause of stuttering in some devices. Well I'm using my laptop on my pc so It's hooked up to lan cable anyway.. I've also tested it other way - disabled ethernet device and used wi-fi for a day : same results.


Well, that's about it. Usually I consider myself quite knowledgeable about computers and I've never really needed help with my problems. But I've been using this laptop for about 2 months now and I've tried everything I could think off.

I really hope it's something stupid and I'll just need to flick the switch and it'll work.
Thank you in advance for any ideas you might have about this situation.

 

[armapker]

This is definately a hard drive problem. First, try and defrag it/run CCleaner/disk cleanup stuff like that. See if that fixes the problem. If it doesn't, do a wipe and reinstall of the laptop. If this doesn't work you are probably going to need a new hard drive (I would reccomend a new one anyway as those symptoms are almost always because your hard drive is way too slow). Here's a cheap but fast one:
http/www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIA2W00YW3513

Sorry to jump to a "go buy this" conclusion but I know all too well the problems when you have a slow hard drive. Before doing this, however, try and do maintanence on your laptop IE do the following:

1. Defrag using windows defrag
2. Do a disk cleanup
3. Download and install CCleaner, do the normal cleaner and then on the left select registry and clean that too (fix the problems)
4. Download and install Glary's utilities, do the "one click maintanence" and then go to advanced tools > windows registry > defrag

This, if anything, has a good chance of fixing your problem

 

[Nekyo Bot]

Sadly I've already tried all of those beforehand... Thanks for the solution though. It makes my life a lot simpler knowing that I don't have to check up every single piece of my laptop... Thanks for your time.