Ghost in this machine!

[kisk]

This system has me stumped, and I'm almost convinced it must be possessed.

Dell Studio 1555 w/ Vista Home Premium x64

I received this machine initially because it was cutting off after being powered up. After powering down, you could power it back up and it would cut off sooner. Temps turned out to be a problem, and I found the fan was not powering on. The bearings were fine so I assumed it was electrical. Replaced the fan -- same issues.

So I pushed cold air thru it so it wouldn't shut off and I updated the bios. This fixed the fan issue, but now the computer lags real bad constantly. Another funny thing I noticed was when I check temps using Everest or any temp testing app, the computer freezes for 2 seconds about every 5 seconds while displaying the values. This led me to believe it could be a sensor or related motherboard issue, so I replaced the mobo -- same issues!!

This kept happening with the original OS install. Reinstalled Windows with the recovery partition -- same issue. Wiped drive clear except the dell diagnostics partition. Reinstalled Windows again with an OEM disk -- same issues!!



Ram tested, passed
Ran Seatools for Dos, both short and long tests, passed
Ran BurnInTest, passed
Ran Eurosoft Pc-Check, passed



Yet the computer still seems to lag REAL bad constantly.


Here's the HDTune test/SMART status.. the test looks funky but again, long and short Seatools passed.


http://my.jetscreenshot.com/8336/20120420-6o3v-72kb.png




What the heck is going on here??

[Trusted IT Solutions]

Looks to me like you need to get another opinion on the HDD. I would use Gsmartcontrol. All the symptoms are there. Or you could just swap the HDD for a new one and install to see if the problem goes away.

[Slaters Kustum Machines]

Looks to me like you need to get another opinion on the HDD. I would use Gsmartcontrol. All the symptoms are there. Or you could just swap the HDD for a new one and install to see if the problem goes away.

What he said ^^^^^ The signs are pointing to the HDD. Make sure the connection is tight as well, but I would swap in a new HDD to test.

[ComputerRepairTech]

Have you checked for throttling? I believe that computers processor is a core 2 duo right? So you could try RMClock.

[Appleby]

Just a long shot but can you boot from something like an Ubuntu disk and run the computer normally? If so, it might clear up the question of whether its the hard drive or not....

[kisk]

Checked the throttling.. thats not it.

Stuck a new drive in there, then booted into mini xp and the did the HDTune test.. it looked good, however then I checked temps and still got the 2 second freezes every 5 seconds issue.

Installing vista on this new drive to see how it runs. Will let you know.

[BigFrog_Computing]

I imagine it will run fine with the new drive. I would say the old drive is bad
based solely on the HDTune benchmark you posted. If you run the bench
from WinPE the graph should not have any spikes, just a smooth curve like the
one below.

Avg throughput should be at least 50MB/sec, especially on a Vista machine.
Vista thrashes drives like crazy unless you disable a bunch of stuff.

Have you tried CoreTemp to see if that also causes the 2 second freeze
when polling CPU temp? Anything in the event log correlating to those freezes?