Lagging windows and mouse pointer in Windows 7

Question

I'm using Windows 7 and on top of it I have installed Visual Studio 2010 and SQL server.

For some time now I have been experiencing a laggy behavior. Explorer windows minimize and maximize with a lag; the mouse pointer also moves slowly.

The question is: How can I detect if it's a malware or some corrupt registry setting that is causing the lag? It's a 3 GHz processor with 4GB RAM and a 500GB HDD.

here is a screen shot of my windows experience index

_{It almost feels like somebody has accessed my PC for monitoring. I'm on an office Domain, so this could be expected from the boss – though it's not officially told and I highly doubt that it is the case because I've been working here for 1 year now.}

Solution

Initially I though that this could be down to overheating or a virus/rootkit and made the following suggestions:

• Use a bootable antivirus product like Kaspersky Rescue Disk to eliminate malware as a possible cause.
• Use a temperature-monitoring program like HWMonitor to check for overheating.

Neither of these turned up any results so I suggested refreshing the Windows Experience Index to see if something was under-performing. John updated his post with his score and it showed that there seemed to be a problem with the graphics hardware/drivers. I looked around on the Internet and it turns out that there is a utility on Intel's web site for automatically updating drivers. Hopefully this has solved the problem.

Comments

[James P]

It's very difficult to know what's causing it based on your description. Have you updated any drivers lately? You haven't mentioned it in your post so I'm assuming you haven't. Some things you can try: use a bootable anti-virus CD to scan your computer for rootkits/viruses (e.g. support.kaspersky.com/viruses/rescuedisk?level=2). Use HWMonitor (cpuid.com/softwares/hwmonitor.html) to check your computer is not overheating. Refresh the Windows Experience Index to see if any of the components are performing badly. Please post more information about the computer spec.

[john]

@James tnx for replying, no i have not updated any drivers, what additional information should i post ...

[James P]

What model of CPU do you have? Do you have a graphics card, and if so what model? Or are you using integrated graphics?

[john]

@James i am using Intel Core i3 CPU and no i am not using any graphics card

[James P]

It sounds like a reasonably recent machine so should not be having these issues. Hopefully the three solutions I mentioned in my first post should cover some of the most likely causes. Let us know how you get on.

[john]

@James tnx for the concern and taking the time to reply, i have downloaded the the HWMonitor but was not able to run it because of work load today :) i am gonna try your suggestions and will post back, tnx again

[john]

@James i have followed all three suggestions, the virus scan showed clean PC, the HWMonitor report seems to be ok every thing is normal but when i refreshed the windows experience index it gave me **1.0** is that a problem ?

[James P]

What are the scores for the individual components (CPU etc.) ?

[john]

@James i have updated the question and added the screen shot

[James P]

Your results suggest that it is a problem with the integrated graphics. I would suggest you try installing the latest version of the Intel drivers. The exact download will depend on which version of Windows you are using (32bit/64bit) and possibly which model of Intel i3 processor you have. You could try the auto update utility to hopefully find the right driver automatically: intel.com/p/en_US/support/detect. Please make sure you have a backup of any important work in case something goes wrong.

[James P]

To clarify: if you're using the Intel HD graphics integrated into the processor then I'm pretty sure your score should be much higher. If you could run Speccy (piriform.com/speccy/download) to confirm your exact hardware spec then it would be helpful thanks.

[john]

@James first of all i really want to thank you because you patiently guided me through the problem installing the latest drivers fixed the problem, and secondly please post the summary of your comments an answer so that i can accept it...

[James P]

Glad I could be of help :-)

[Scott - Слава Україні]

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