Lag spikes at desktop?

[Kofoed]

Hi all!
Lately, (about 3 weeks ago) I started to have some weird lag spikes on my laptop, even while it was just sitting at the desktop, or coming out of sleep.
At first I though it was a driver because it was the only thing I recently updated as far as I can recall.

The lag:
The lag seems to occur randomly, it lasts from for 5 sec to 10min, sometimes rebooting dosen't fix it either.
During the lag, everything happens with a 2-3 seconds delay, such as opening/closing windows and even the curser gets updated in spikes.

What I tried to far:
Reinstall entire OS (Windows 8.1)
Look at task manager, everything looks normal, low disk and CPU usuage, memory about 17-20%
I have also tried to run serval disk checkers, aswell as memtest, but no errors anywhere.
I tried to run prime95 to see if it was overheating, but even after 30min of running there were no errors/warning nor any lag to be seen. Tempertures hoovered around 60-70C.


Does anyone have anyother suggestions? My laptop is approximately 1 year old now, it is a:

Sony SVS13A3W9E
(Link to Sony's support side for my laptop)
http://www.sony.co.uk/support/en/product/SVS13A3W9E

Link to system spec at Amazon
http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00BF7O71K/?tag=tec053-21


Thanks in advanced!

 

[kn00tcn]

does it still do it when it's a fresh boot (not sleep)? 60-70C seems quite hot, how 'low' usage are you talking? you're sure the hard drive activity light or noise isnt particularly happening during this time?

 

[Kofoed]

does it still do it when it's a fresh boot (not sleep)? 60-70C seems quite hot, how 'low' usage are you talking? you're sure the hard drive activity light or noise isnt particularly happening during this time?

From what I noticed, the lag dosen't happen right after a fresh boot, also the HDD light will flash in sync with the mouse/windows updating on the screen, (every few sec) not staying on constantly.
Low Cpu/disk usuage is about 0% to 3%, nothing unusual to see in the task manager during the lag :/ The 70C was during prime95, but still no lag happend at that time.

 

[kn00tcn]

in task manager, look closer at the physical memory section, notice how there are separate lines for total, cached, available, free

what i have noticed is that if you do a lot of disk reads (such as moving or copying files, including to/from network drives or usb sticks), windows caches some of the data into memory (that's why you may have seen a situation where copying a file to a usb stick then opening it does NOT result in the usb stick light blinking or the slow speed of the device making the file open slowly... most obvious if you have a large wav file being opened in an audio editor for example)

so after a while, i would see my 'free' amount go to near or absolute 0, even though available ram is high, at this point things seem to slightly slow down since it's shuffling cached data, maybe pagefile data, & the new data i'm trying to use between drive & ram

so i'm wondering during these lags if the 'free' amount is low

although reason i asked for not sleep is because i simply dont trust sleep mode, there have been odd issues such as amd cards not waking or clocking properly

this may be unlikely in your bios, but is there an option called 'repost video on s3 resume' or anything like that?

could also try the old driver you know was previously used when things were fine

 

[Kofoed]

I will check for the free memory during the lag tomorrow, if it matters the machine have 8GB though.
Also the bios is really limited im afraid, theres only a very few options there.
I already tried the older drivers, although that didn't fix the issue, it did run fine for a few days actually. Could it be a recent Windows Update you think?
I tried to do a system restore prior to any windows update, gonna see what happens

EDIT: No lag happend during the use today, I will report back when/if the lag returns!

EDIT2: Unfortunately the lag returened, windows 8 only had "Avalible" memory, not free shown anywhere, however Avalible was about 5GB.
I tried to remove one of the memory sticks :c gonna see if it changes anything!

EDIT 3: Despite memtest and windows showing no errors, removing my memory stick seem to have indeed fixed this issue.