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Today, my computer at work has been acting very slow. There seems to be a lot of lag that occurs between certain operations. For example, when one window has the focus and you click on another window, it's supposed to switch over to it and highlight it instantly. However, there's a slight bit of lag between the switching of focus and I can actually see window being redrawn as it applies the new active window styles. When I maximize windows, it's all chunky-like as it redraws the window to adjust all menus to fit the new maximized state.

I've checked task manager and don't see any processes consuming excessive memory and my CPU is spiking at no higher than 3%.

Are there processes that can be installed that don't show up in the task manager? For example, could my employer have secretly installed some key logger or screen capture software that would obviously not be very secretive if it showed up in the task manager?

I've even rebooted my computer and it's still acting sluggish. It just started today. What can I do to really analyze the usage of my system resources?

Edit: It's a quad core i7 870 @ 2.93ghz w/ 8 gigs of ram.

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Grab Process Explorer, and see if any processes have unusually high I/O counts, threads, or working set sizes. –  Breakthrough Aug 4 '11 at 19:43
Is it still slow if running in Safe Mode? Did you run the Task Manager as an administrator (click "Show Processes from All Users")? If not, you'll only see your own processes. Does Windows' built-in "Resource Monitor" show you anything odd? –  techie007 Aug 4 '11 at 19:59
I checked out the resource monitor and saw nothing out of the ordinary. I am thinking it was LCore.exe that I explained in my other post. Weird. –  oscilatingcretin Aug 4 '11 at 20:56
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2 Answers

up vote 2 down vote accepted

You can try using Process Explorer to help isolate any rogue processes. It could also be spyware and or a virus on your system. If you are running any antivirus or antispyware programs I would suggest making sure they are up to date and try to run some scans.

Another possibility is it could be hardware related. You can try booting off of your Windows 7 disk or another utility disk like UBCD and running some diagnostic scans. Things to try would be Memtest86+ and any hard drive S.M.A.R.T. tests, in addition to scanning for viruses/spyware.

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This computer is at work. It's highly unlikely he has a Windows 7 disk or administrator access to the box. –  music2myear Aug 4 '11 at 19:51
I got Process Explorer and started clicking around different windows and LCore.exe (Logitech gaming keyboard agent) starting spiking all over the place. I could have just used regular Task Manager, but Process Explorer's process icons somehow caught my eye easier. I terminated the process and restarted it and everything's back to normal. Process Explorer in and of itself didn't solve my problem, but I'll mark yours as the answer since Process Explorer is so cool. –  oscilatingcretin Aug 4 '11 at 20:02
Sorry I missed that part about it being a work computer the first time around. You won't be able to do much if its a work computer. If it keeps up, I'd ask your IT department if they can take a look at it for you. –  sbtkd85 Aug 4 '11 at 20:11
I actually do have admin rights here, but it turns out I didn't need to go that route. –  oscilatingcretin Aug 4 '11 at 20:26
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Is there any unusual slowness opening files from network drives? Especially on networked computers where the files you normally work on are on network drives, slowness on the network could account for slowness on your computer.

Is somebody's antivirus scan running and set to scan all the network files (sometimes it happens)?

Or is your own antivirus software running a full system scan? These may not take high CPU, but because they're working on all the files on the hard drive, it can still slow things down.

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