Unknown computer issue

[♔Lord Stason♔]

As of Friday 21st of Febuary my computer has been acting very un-usually slow since installing 2 new games that together were about 8.5GB memory onto my 500GB hardrive.

Since my computer has been performing very slowly, i've defragged and cleaned out my RAM with a ram cleaner on my computer and corrected any faults i've know for a while that havn't been corrected due to lazyness, small things really.

So ive gone down the path of technicallity and fixed known problems or new ones.

Still problem persists.

So i've ran two anti-virus scans and spyware scans on both of my anti-spy/virus programs (AVG, spy sweeper,kaspersky) nothing came up apart from the usual tracking cookies which are harmless still but removed.

Problem still persists.

Now my mouse occasionally disconnects from the computer (loss of power, i know this because it has an LED showing power status) it's cabled into a usb port and connection is secure and not damaged leading no to known answers.

My other concern is my power supply could be on it's way out, because my only other known answer for is the voltage is low causing drowned performance and disconnectivity to anything using power.

Latest update:

Computer has now blue screened and i had a latencey check on D drive (Recovery)

Temperatures are reading normal on all sensors, i'm now thinking a possible hardware failure.
Any thoughts?

[Freddie]

What games did you install.

[rsslcs]

Could it be background programs (like Gamespy Comrade, or a download program to update games) that are the problem? Some of them can be real resource hogs once they get going, and eespecially if you already have other things going on like scans and steam, etc.. They also sometimes get installed without the game installer telling you so it might be a possibility. Other than that, I can't think really.

[♔Lord Stason♔]

What games did you install.

Rome total war Anthology from CD's, It's only a small ammount but i've made duplicate copies of the folders for mod's.

I then installed SPQR and Roma Surrectum.

I went back few steps and made clean installs on both mods and games to see if i can rectify the problem but it made no difference.

Could it be background programs (like Gamespy Comrade, or a download program to update games) that are the problem? Some of them can be real resource hogs once they get going, and eespecially if you already have other things going on like scans and steam, etc.. They also sometimes get installed without the game installer telling you so it might be a possibility. Other than that, I can't think really.

First thing i did was use the Vista performance controls and remove any unwanted background programs, but i already know there isn't any because i closely monitor everything on this computer so i know in most cases what should be running or not. which is why it's unusual for my computer to be this slow after installing 2 games, and being defragged. Playing games i don't get this funny slow behaviour it's when im browsing the internet (firefox, exlporer) or opening itunes or AVG or any other non-game related program even file transferes.

I've updated drivers, re-installed drivers still nothing!

[29 days later]

If you computer is acting slow for just general things like opening applications, delayed responses and slow to open files then boot the computer in safe mode and see if the problem presists. If it doesn't then you need to disable all your background apps and turn them on one by one to identify which one is the culprit if not use Windows restore and set the computer back before the problem started.

[Spiff]

If the computer is sluggish but the memory/processor/hard drive isn't reporting any usage or stress caused by software then I'd assume its a hardware fault of some kind.

How old is your computer, and is all the hardware that's supposed to be there registering? Maybe one of your RAM modules has died or something. - but then I'd expect you'd already have noticed if you had less ram all of a sudden.

general sluggishness certainly seems odd to me if it isnt accompanied by any crashes or error messages. Id be tempted to run a long stress test just to see if I could provoke something more conclusive.

[♔Lord Stason♔]

Yeah tried that route checked the RAM and CPU everything seems to be normal, i even put in my old RAM to see if it was something to do with the memory and the problem still persists.

I'm now certain it has nothing to do with conponents attached to the motherboard, however this could be a OS problem or my hardrive or my psu.

my computer is 4 years old however i updated parts and the only thing that is that age is my hardrive and my psu.

[♔Lord Stason♔]

for anyone that can make any understanding of this look at my RAM usage it's crazy!

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

[Spiff]

As far as i know Vista is designed to use about 50% of your ram for the superfetch thing that it does. I imagine whatever percent of memory it uses in this way is still available for other programs to use if needed so it isnt really a problem.

Anyway if you can get your hands on some spare components it would be worth testing things like a different psu, just to be sure.

Also I'd back up your important files, just in case

[Freddie]

My other concern is my power supply could be on it's way out, because my only other known answer for is the voltage is low causing drowned performance and disconnectivity to anything using power.

Sorry I should have picked up on this earlier. This should be your primary concern! A PSU that's has damaged 12v or 5v rails will break your components, the fluctuation on the 12v rail only has to be as little more then 10% (10% being set out in the ATX standard) for damage to occur.