Hi,
I'm new to the forum and I'm hoping the community will be able to help
me with a problem I have with Vista!

I have a Dell Vostro 1500 laptop running Vista Business (6.0 Build
6001). I run it on dual screen mode with a separate uSoft Wireless 5000
Kbd & Mouse. I'm a developer mostly using VS 2008.

The problem is that when I use my keyboard the system freezes for about
4 seconds every 13 seconds. What I mean by this is that if I'm in (say)
MS Word happily typing away then every 13 seconds the characters stop
appearing in the screen for a period of 4 seconds. Any key-presses made
during this 4 second period are remembered and actioned when the system
comes back to life. It doesn't matter what app I'm in - Word, Vis
Studio, Workbench, UltraEdit, Excel, the app/webpage I'm writing this
in, anything - it seems to happen at a system level.

It freezes with the laptop's built in keyboard or the external
keyboard. If also freezes if I unplug the external kbd. It's been
happening since about Christmas time (the machine itself is about 18
months old). Around February time I added the uSoft keyboard hoping
that the new drivers would sort the problem but it didn't. Reading
various posts here I've tried to update the drivers but the system says
they're up-to-date.

What's really weird is that it's not just the kbd that freezes, it
seems to be the whole system. In order to get more accurate timings, I
loaded the clock application (the thing that lets you change the
system’s date & time). I was amazed to see that when the keyboard
freezes the clock freezes at the same time. The clock will go from
showing (say) 13-14-15 seconds then nothing till it suddenly jumps to 19
seconds. Also looking at other posts I decided to look at what the
Processes/Performances are doing in this period and guess what - yep,
the Task Manager freezes during this 4 second period too! (NOTE Not
everything freezes - the disks still chunter away during this 4s period
as is the way with Vista!).

What’s even weirder is that if I sit and do nothing with the kbd then
the clock (and Task Manager) will carry on unhindered! So it’s the act
of typing that causes the freeze. I get the impression that the 13
second cycle continues when I stop using the kbd because when I start
using the kbd after a period of inactivity, I can hit the 4 second
hang-up period after any time period (ie it’s not always (eg) 9 seconds
after I start typing).

So what’s happened since Christmas? Well, before Christmas I used to
share the machine on a Belkin Flip KVM switch whereas now it’s
stand-alone. I’m discounting this as the reason ‘cos A) AFAICT there’s
nothing on the machine that’s connected to the KVM (drivers etc) and B)
the problem started just before I took the machine off the KVM.

So if anyone has any idea what might be causing this or where I might
look for an answer I’d be eternally grateful.

Thanks

Nick


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NickyBicks
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