All of a sudden, I’m getting some massive keyboard and scroll-wheel delays on my Vista computer. I can type about 6-8 letters before they display on the screen.
I have:[ul]
[li]checked Task Manager and there’s nothing weird there (including the processes tab) and I don’t have a lot of programs or proccesses going and nothing I can’t identify.[/li][li]my disk usage is normal (there’s about 34 gigs free on my C drive)[/li][li]I haven’t added any new programs or updates recently.[/li][li]I’ve done a virus-scan with Avast and a spyware scan with Spybot: clean[/li][li]I’ve defragged my HDD, just in case.[/li][li]I’ve tried a second keyboard (haven’t tried a second mouse): no change.[/li][li]Rebooting can sometimes temporarily relieve the problem but not always and it keeps returning. [/li][/ul]
I don’t have any restore points that go back far enough to fix this and if I can avoid it, I’d rather not restore from a system backup.
I used to have a cow-orker who would have this function turn on sometimes. He used to fall asleep at his desk with his hands pressing down some keys. After a few times, the computer decides he has mobility issues and turned this function on. He changed several keyboards before someone figured out how to fix it.
Nope–great catch that I hadn’t considered RedSwinglineOne, but sadly not the problem–sticky keys was off (and it wouldn’t explain the slow mouse wheel function in any case).
pull up your windows task manager (ctr alt del) and see if your cpu usage is maxed out. Do this before you get bogged down so you can see what is going on. I would look at the processes and order them by the cpu column to see if anything weird is pinging.
I know you said you defragged, but check to see if your defrag is set to run in the background. A guy on PC World had a headache with this not to long ago, I’ll see if I can dig up a linky.
Are you just having delays there, or is it taking longer to boot the computer when you turn it on too? My computer was taking forever to reboot the past two weeks, and I discovered that something caused many programs - most programs I use regularly, it seems - to begin booting at startup for no apparent reason (malware, spyware, virus, nothing comes up on a scan, but I’m sure it’s one of the three). Not all of them were showin up in the task manager, either.
Just for giggles, try this (#2, that is) and see how many programs are starting when you boot the computer. I got rid two dozen or so things that were starting up, and now I’m experiencing far fewer delays all around.
There are a few culprits that affect Vista, specifically.
Earlier this week, I had a huge headache with the hard drive and processor usage way up (I’m running a pretty low spec machine: Pentium 4, 2GB of RAM). I knew from experience that it was related to all of the patches I got this week. Every time Windows installs a patch, it can trigger a restore point. On a machine with lots of installed apps like mine, that can take a long, long time. I had exacerbated the problem by recently switching to power saving power mode, so my machine didn’t have a lot of time when I wasn’t using it to take care of all the house keeping.
You can see this in action if you launch the Resource Monitor while your machine is acting up. (The quickest way is from the Performance tab of Task Manager.) Expand the hard drive tab, and then sort by the Write column; you may well notice that it’s a system check point file that’s being written to, often at very high rates. In theory, I believe, the restore point thread is run at background priority, so it should only be taking up the CPU when it’s not busy. However, disk I/O can lock up the bus, causing the freezes that you’re noticing.
ETA: Hmmm… that was a lot more coherent in my head. I shouldn’t try to post and watch TV at the same time, apparently.
