Need help troubleshooting elusive system lag

[Fluffers]

Basically, I just need someone experienced in troubleshooting to help me figure out what specifically is the root of all my problems.

What the problem is:

My entire computer lags, but the lag is inconsistent. Opening almost any program, loading files from either my SSD or HDD, loading webpages, executing certain inputs (for example, changing servers on discord or scrolling in certain webpages/ programs), and running certain kinds of programs like video games, all bring my computer to a crawl. Sometimes momentarily, sometimes constantly until the action is halted. Running a videogame that I typically get 120 frames per second in now causes my entire computer to bog down, the game runs at 1-5 frames per second, and even the audio is laggy and choppy.

What I've noticed after a week or so, is that things that normally cause my CPU usage to bump up by 1-2%, is causing it to bump up by 30-60%, and where most games would cause my CPU to run at 40-70% cpu usage, now cause it to run at 100% cpu usage constantly. What's weird is that it still idles at 0-1% usage, it will just spike to a massive amount of usage from seemingly anything.

This isn't something that slowly got worse over time, it just happened out of nowhere. One day everything was operating as usual, then literally the next day all these problems started.

What I've done to troubleshoot for myself:

I've tried defragmenting my HDD
I've tried manually crawling through every single active service and background program, and nothing is unusual or out of place
I've tried cleaning out every crevice of my PC
I've tried upgrading every driver I could find
I've tried I've tried using several hardware benchmark softwares (HD tune, Crystal mark etc.) only to find nothing unusual

I just can't figure out what the problem is. I know it's not my HDD, because I've tried disconnecting it and I still had the issue, I know it's not my SDD because to my knowledge they don't go partially faulty, if they fail they just fail entirely.

If anyone is willing to help, I can hand over whatever system info you want/ need, can run whatever benchmark programs you might need me to, anything.

[DaveLembke]

Please share information about your computer ... what make/model or is custom build what the specs are so we can see what your working with for a system before we go assuming this or that as cause.

[Allan]

If you haven't done so already, please run full system scans with BOTH you installed Anti Virus App and with MalwareBytes.

[Fluffers]

Please share information about your computer ... what make/model or is custom build what the specs are so we can see what your working with for a system before we go assuming this or that as cause.

It's a custom build, all the parts were bought new and are a little over 2 years old except for the RAM, it's about 6 months old.

PCPartPicker part list

CPU: Intel - Core i5-4590 3.3GHz Quad-Core Processor
CPU Cooler: Cooler Master - Hyper 212 EVO 82.9 CFM Sleeve Bearing CPU Cooler 
Motherboard: ASRock - H97 Anniversary ATX LGA1150 Motherboard
Memory: Kingston - HyperX Fury Black 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR3-1866 Memory
Storage: Samsung - 850 EVO-Series 250GB 2.5" Solid State Drive 
Storage: Western Digital - Caviar Blue 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive 
Video Card: XFX - Radeon R9 390 8GB Double Dissipation Video Card
Case: Deepcool - TESSERACT SW ATX Mid Tower Case
Power Supply: EVGA - SuperNOVA G2 850W 80+ Gold Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply   
Optical Drive: Lite-On - iHAS124-14 DVD/CD Writer
Operating System: Microsoft - Windows 7 Home Premium SP1 OEM 64-bit 
Sound Card: Asus - Xonar DGX 24-bit 96 KHz Sound Card
Wireless Network Adapter: TP-Link - TL-WN881ND PCI-Express x1 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi Adapter
Monitor: Acer - H236HLbid 23.0" 1920x1080 60Hz Monitor 
Total:
Generated by PCPartPicker 2017-12-15 16:20 EST-0500

Any other details you need?

[DaveLembke]

Awaiting the results of Allans suggested malware and virus scan before making further suggestion. This isn't a lightweight system and the behavior is very strange and could be malware related.

[Fluffers]

Awaiting the results of Allans suggested malware and virus scan before making further suggestion. This isn't a lightweight system and the behavior is very strange and could be malware related.

Here's a scan from my antivirus:



And here's a scan from MalwareBytes:



Malwarebytes
www.malwarebytes.com

-Log Details-
Scan Date: 12/15/17
Scan Time: 5:56 PM
Log File: 9b19eff6-e1f3-11e7-a263-d050997674ca.json
Administrator: Yes

-Software Information-
Version: 3.3.1.2183
Components Version: 1.0.262
Update Package Version: 1.0.3498
License: Trial

-System Information-
OS: Windows 7 Service Pack 1
CPU: x64
File System: NTFS
User: Brandon-PC\Brandon

-Scan Summary-
Scan Type: Threat Scan
Result: Completed
Objects Scanned: 290095
Threats Detected: 0
(No malicious items detected)
Threats Quarantined: 0
(No malicious items detected)
Time Elapsed: 4 min, 27 sec

-Scan Options-
Memory: Enabled
Startup: Enabled
Filesystem: Enabled
Archives: Enabled
Rootkits: Disabled
Heuristics: Enabled
PUP: Detect
PUM: Detect

-Scan Details-
Process: 0
(No malicious items detected)

Module: 0
(No malicious items detected)

Registry Key: 0
(No malicious items detected)

Registry Value: 0
(No malicious items detected)

Registry Data: 0
(No malicious items detected)

Data Stream: 0
(No malicious items detected)

Folder: 0
(No malicious items detected)

File: 0
(No malicious items detected)

Physical Sector: 0
(No malicious items detected)

Sidenote: While running malwarebytes, my computer constantly crawled at an extremely slow speed, lagging and very unresponsive. This has been the case with other things that scan my files, such as HD tune.

[Mark.]

some o5ther rabbit holes to go down....

have you optimised your SSD?
also, lag on an SSD is one way they fail.  early Samsung EVOs ((830/840's I think) were recalled due to slowing down within months of purchase.
have you checked for firmware updates on the SSD?

reboot the PC into Safe Mode and see if the lag is present there as well?
Safe Mode has the advantage of no background running processes that may be causing your fault.

[Fluffers]

some o5ther rabbit holes to go down....

have you optimised your SSD?
also, lag on an SSD is one way they fail.  early Samsung EVOs ((830/840's I think) were recalled due to slowing down within months of purchase.
have you checked for firmware updates on the SSD?

reboot the PC into Safe Mode and see if the lag is present there as well?
Safe Mode has the advantage of no background running processes that may be causing your fault.

I did try optimizing my SSD, and the firmware is up to date.

I tried rebooting it in safe mode, and the lag was either non-existent, or so minor I couldn't notice it. That probably means it has something to do with the services I'm running, but I tried finding one specifically that was causing these issues, and turned up empty. Any advice on what I should do next?

This is really bizarre to me, you'd think that if it was a problem with a service/ process causing the problems, the CPU usage would ALWAYS be high, but rather than having a high CPU usage, it's like something is causing everything else to use far more CPU than it normally would.

[Mark.]

anything in the Event Viewer that may shed some light?

[Fluffers]

I'm not sure what errors would be relevant to a laggy system, but I've got a few here that are throwing up some red flags.

For starters, I'm regularly getting an error under a tree called "DNS Client events", event ID 1012, there's over 12k instances of this event, and it occurs a few times in rapid succession, every several minutes.



There's another called "iumsvc", event ID 255.



Aside from those two, I don't see anything sketchy or unusual.

[Techjourney]

I am happy to try and help you some more if needed. Please follow all procedures below to start

Download the following and run
http://filehippo.com/download_speccy

The information found by Speccy is very helpful when diagnosing issues.

1. Go to File Menu
2. Select File > Publish Snapshot
3. Copy the created link in your next reply

Download Process Explorer
http://live.sysinter...com/procexp.exe

1. Save it to your desktop then run it. Right Click and Select Run As Administrator
2. Select View Menu Click Select Columns
3. In the Select Columns Window Check Verified Signer and Click OK
4. Select Options Menu and Check Verify Image Signatures
5. Click twice on the CPU column to sort by highest CPU usage
6. Wait approximately a minute
7. Select Save or Save As from the File Menu and save to Desktop
8. Open the file and Copy and Paste the text to your Reply

Please download and Run the Event Viewer Tool by Vino Rosso
http://images.malwar...om/vino/VEW.exe

1. Run program as Administrator
2.. Under Select log to query
3. select System
4. Under Select type to list
Select:
* Error
* Warning

Choose the Number of events as follows:
1. Click on Number of events
2. Type 20 in the box (1 to 20)
3. Click the Run button (Notepad will open the log)
Paste or upload to next reply

Rename the first log file or it will be overwritten
Run this again
Except at step 3. Select Application
Paste or upload to next reply

[patio]

His lag is from the web...and a possibly faulty network controller/card based on the info above...

[Techjourney]

Okay, Network drivers are the issue many times.

[Fluffers]

http://www.tp-link.com/us/products/details/cat-5519_TL-WN881ND.html#specifications

This is the wireless adapter card I'm using if that's the case. Any advice on what I could do to confirm that it is the wireless card, or what I could do to (try to) solve the problem?

[patio]

Borrow 1 to test...you will know in 2 hours...

[Fluffers]

Alright, I've made a breakthrough, although it just makes everything more confusing.

I use a program called jetclean from time to time, it searches out and deletes dead files etc, it's an excellent cleaning software. While I was using it I looked through the settings and saw that there's another software by the same company called jetboost, and decided to check it out. One of it's unintentional uses is that it allows you to quickly and easily target any and all processes and services on your computer, and lets you temporarily disable them with a single central button. Well, using it's recommended settings, it stopped 20 services and enabled 4 of its own boosting techniques; cleaning the ram, clearing the clipboard, disabling automatic updates, and enabling the "jet boost power solution". Now, at first when I used this software to see if it would restore my PC to its original speed, it did, and I was elated that I could finally find what service was causing the problem. After going through every single service in the list, none of them restored my system's speed and response time when disabled. However, I still had the 4 extra options to chose from. Obviously it wouldn't be something like clearing the clipboard or disabling automatic updates, so I checked to see if the "jet boost power solution" was restoring my system's speed, and to my surprise, it was.

Here's all I can find about this option:

"Changes your power settings to high performance"

From the website:

"Game power solution:Optimizes your PC power setting to deliver a powerful gaming experience"

That's literally everything. The weird thing is, I've always had my power settings set to high performance. It's doing SOMETHING to my PC to make it not lag anymore, and I have no freaking idea what. As relieving as it is to have a solution to the problem, it's just a bandage, and I still don't know what specifically is wrong. I have to just always have this program running with this option in order to have a not-laggy computer. The fact that I have absolutely no idea why my entire system is extremely laggy, and became extremely laggy out of nowhere, is still bothering me.

I might just backup my ssd, format it, and reinstall windows.

[Quantos]

I don't advise using JetClean, it's garbage and you're messing stuff up with it.  <edit> That's the technical explanation I think.... </edit>

You don't need to do anything to optimize your SSD

What are you measuring the latency with?

[Fluffers]

What are you measuring the latency with?

Uh, I haven't actually measured any latency so far, I've just kinda been "feeling" it

Like how a cook "eyeballs" an ingredient rather than accurately measure it

So far I've just been trying to single out any particular cause of the system lag

[Quantos]

Uh, I haven't actually measured any latency so far, I've just kinda been "feeling" it

Yeah, that's really accurate, you really think that you can tell on your own?
The first thing I would look at is your internet, second is that bunk GPU - XFX doesn't have drivers for it, they use generic AMD drivers

[Fluffers]

The first thing I would look at is your internet, second is that bunk GPU - XFX doesn't have drivers for it, they use generic AMD drivers

Is there anything in particular I should be looking for? To be honest, this is the first time I've ever heard of internet latency being capable of causing system lag, I wasn't even aware that it was possible.

[Quantos]

Are you saying that you are experiencing latency whether or not you are connected to the internet?

[BC_Programmer]

Perhaps the power options that the setting you mention adjust are found in the advanced power options? In the control panel if you click "Change Plan Settings" next to the plan and then "Change Advanced Power Settings" there are a number of different power options. You might want to write down the settings as they appear before and after you set the option in the program, which should help you determine what it changes so you can do it yourself.