Hi everyone, for any of those reading that can help with computer problems, I am currently encountering a severe issue with my laptop at this moment in time. When playing games I seem to be encountering serious lag spikes when playing them. This occurs with any game, even older games that are not taxing on my machine (i.e. Unreal Tournament 99, Sacrifice, eDuke32). I have already defragged my machine, ran scans in Avast and Malwarebytes, ran CCleaner, defragged and cleaned the registry, and even used a system restore point to go back a few days or so. None of that helps, the only thing I was able to see that supposedly caused it but not completely was dllhost.exe running in the background, disabling fixed it but not completely since I encountered the same problem a while later. I am running out of ideas of what the problem could be outside of the doomed hardware failure answer, if anyone can help please respond.

I will post specs of the machine if they are needed.

Though not a mechanic of any sort, I can give you my two cents.

Maybe it's a problem with the machine itself rather than the software. Also, have you check how much RAM do you have and how much is taken up? (Like, you have 1 GB and 400 MB is used up.) Third, how old is your computer? For example, my dad has an old computer which is sloooooowwww, even if we defrag it and stuff.

also have a look at how much disk space Windows uses for swap - if it is set for windows to manage it, perhaps set a lower figure and work upwards.

knowing the windows version would also help.

my first (and only) question is - does it get very warm?

I had the same, and the fan was clogged.

(you can see your core and GPU temperatures with programs like Speccy)

ninja'd - try running windows task manager, and when it lags - look to see what uses the most resources

Try downloading HWMonitor (free) and let that run in the background while you game. Afterward, see what the max temperatures are. If they're above 95 deg C or so, your CPU might be throttling itself.

http://www.cpuid.com/downloads/hwmonitor/1.21-setup.exe

Also, here's a guide to have Windows monitor your CPU usage:

http://www.instantfundas.com/2012/03/how-to-record-cpu-and-memory-usage-over.html

in thos case your system specs would help - along with the age of your rig (considering the game s you're running / having problems with) but also, if thats not helpful, Iain, pointed out something that fixed a major lag issue for me recently:

http://www.gog.com/forum/general/saints_row_3_lag_anyone_got_a_solution?search=saints%20row%203%20LAG

To answer amok, it does get warm but it hasn't gotten to the point where the system tells me otherwise, i.e. my laptop will start whistling when it gets too warm. I checked the temperatures and my CPU is at 46 degrees Celsius, motherboard at 50 degrees Celsius, and the GPU is at 44 degrees Celsius.

Ian, I looked at both the task manager and resource monitor and that is what is baffling me, nothing outside of the dllhost.exe thing was causing issues. Nothing seems to be eating up the CPU as far as I can tell.

try the link that Sachys gave - let us know if that helps please.

Specs?

Here are my specs for my machine:

HP Pavilion dv6 Notebook PC
OS: Windows 7 64-bit Home Premium
RAM: 4GB
CPU: Intel Core i3 Processor M330@ 2.13 GHZ
GPU: NVIDIA Geforce 105m

Not the best for modern gaming but for old school PC gaming and heck even DOSBox to a degree, it is decent. I am going to try that link and will post what happens so far.

Well - that's all I had, I'm out.

I haven't opened it to clean everything yet because I am afraid of ruining my computer, I have been told opening laptops are a pain in the rear to open up and fix. I have though used a can of compressed air to clean dust out of the vents which has helped with my heating issues before, and updating the BIOS of the machine helped too.

Does the problem only happen when you play games?. How about when you use cpu intensive applications or other apps which uses the gpu?.Its a pretty decent cpu for a laptop so you should not be getting much lag.....