Sudden lag and fps drop in all my pc games

Hello there. I've come here because despite all my efforts to do this on my own, I cannot understand how or why I have poor fps and lag in all of the pc games I currently own. All of them used to run smooth and fine. However a couple of weeks ago, I started to notice extreme lag and extremely low fps. I've scanned for viruses,spyware,malware. All clean. I deleted temporary files and cleaned the registry. I updated my video card driver. I even did a system restore. When all of that didn't work, I decided to look internally. Despite cleaning all the dust that was causing overheating fans, I'm still lagging in all my pc games. Even online flash games are not running smooth. It has nothing to do with my internet connection. I have broadband and with broadband websites are loading with ease. I also don't think it has to do with a virus. I have done multiple scans and even checked out all the processes currently running. All of them are normal and legit.
I have no clue whats causing this crap. My system specs are compatible with the low end games I used to be able to play. But now despite having a new 9800gt(before I had a 8600gt), and 2gb(before I had 1gb)of ram even games like minecraft and warband are lagging... Plz help!!

Idk if this has anything to do. I doubt it should, but all this lag stuff started happening after I got a new keyboard. I didnt get any lag when I got a new mouse tho so....

Unplug your keyboard. If that boosts FPS then you know what the problem is. If it doesn't, then there is something else that either you did, or someone else did to make it run that slow. Maybe get close to maximum capacity on your harddrive?

Have you opened task manager and see where all the CPU is going?

Have you tried defragmenting your hard drive?

Have you tried rubbing the ran area with some water based lube?

Did you get the correct driver? Some manufacturers have a separate driver to the official nVidia/ATi ones.

Swadius said:

Have you opened task manager and see where all the CPU is going?

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This should be the first step.

Last time I had something like this an application was doing a massive auto update.

Maybe your computer overheated. See if the box is scalding hot.

Don't use your face.

Thanks for the suggestions guys. While none of them really worked, they are good things to do next time this happens again. It appears freeing up my hard drive space greatly improved my performance. I still don't understand how a full hard drive can cause fps drop. Especially when I've had it fuller before with no lag in sight...

sinofchaos said:

Thanks for the suggestions guys. While none of them really worked, they are good things to do next time this happens again. It appears freeing up my hard drive space greatly improved my performance. I still don't understand how a full hard drive can cause fps drop. Especially when I've had it fuller before with no lag in sight...

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Might be a page file thing. Did you run out of space on the OS partition?

sinofchaos said:

Thanks for the suggestions guys. While none of them really worked, they are good things to do next time this happens again. It appears freeing up my hard drive space greatly improved my performance. I still don't understand how a full hard drive can cause fps drop. Especially when I've had it fuller before with no lag in sight...

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What happens is Windows doesn't have a dedicated SWAP file. Instead it uses a 'Paging' file which allocates a certain amount of space in the hard drive to allow it to 'move' files around. Because it's not dedicated, Windows will allow that amount of space to get used, meaning it can't move things around as efficiently. If it didn't happen before when you had the hard drive filled up maybe windows at that time allocated a smaller amount of space for paging. Either that or maybe whatever you did wasn't quite as RAM intensive allowing your computer to use the RAM instead of the 'Paging' file. You can actually turn Paging off and run off your RAM if you have enough RAM, and fast enough RAM. Generally speaking though, there is a slight performance decay from a Hard drive which is 10% full to a hard drive which is 60% full. Though going anywhere under 25% on a dedicated partition creates a rapidly declining performance as it fills up past that point. Though I'm running windows on 3 different partitions. One for General Windows at 93% full, one for space intensive games and applications such as Oblivion with mods, Mount and Blade with tons of mods, and The Sims 3. That's running at 63.23% full since it needs more Swapiness (Which doesn't actually apply in windows) and then I have another 'Storage' type of partition to put everything else. Runs rather smoothly and evades the entire degrading performance. Though I also have Paging turned off since I have 4 GB of DDR3 which never gets used fully.

It appears I'm still lagging. I went on my pc today, dled one mod(only one) and when i went to go play warband, it starts lagging and my fps is horrible at the start. I don't understand why. Yesterday night I was able to play Darkest of Days and other games without any troubles, but this morning all my games arent running smooth...

Well even after deleting like 4 or 5 games I hold dear on steam my hard drive didnt free up. Any ideas why? I deleted  battlefield 2 yesterday and that freed some space up.(I think)(I hope)(I cant remember if it did...)

Just so I know for sure, what's the disk usage at? Used/Free?

Pierce Elliot said:

Just so I know for sure, what's the disk usage at? Used/Free?

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My C Drive is 80% used 20% free. I recently dled a free defragger online that helped defrag my computer at the fraction of the time the windows version would have taken(never defragged in 4 years, windows version would have taken over 48 hours, this other version took only 2 hours)

sinofchaos said:

Pierce Elliot said:

Just so I know for sure, what's the disk usage at? Used/Free?

Click to expand...

My C Drive is 80% used 20% free. I recently dled a free defragger online that helped defrag my computer at the fraction of the time the windows version would have taken(never defragged in 4 years, windows version would have taken over 48 hours, this other version took only 2 hours)

Click to expand...

if your drive c is less than 750GB then there's your problem. getting it to 35% could potentially help. Alternatively enough ram and a disabled paging file could also help. or if you keep it near perfectly defragmented it should run fine. but I've yet to use a defragmenting program in at least 6 or 7 years so I'm not well versed with them.

Swadius said:

Don't use your face.

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This is where licking the heat sinks comes in handy

Trevty said:

sinofchaos said:

(never defragged in 4 years

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[me=Trevty]chokes[/me]
Other than that, is anything taking up a lot of CPU randomly in the task manager?  I know that was stated before, but you never answered it.

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I checked. Want me to post a screenshot of all my processes? I have like 70-80 at the most. Most of them arent neccessary, but they always come on at startup. Even with all these processes, none of my games lagged in the past. Only recently are they doing so now. My games are still lagging even despite defragging 17000 files.

Pierce Elliot said:

sinofchaos said:

Pierce Elliot said:

Just so I know for sure, what's the disk usage at? Used/Free?

Click to expand...

My C Drive is 80% used 20% free. I recently dled a free defragger online that helped defrag my computer at the fraction of the time the windows version would have taken(never defragged in 4 years, windows version would have taken over 48 hours, this other version took only 2 hours)

Click to expand...

if your drive c is less than 750GB then there's your problem. getting it to 35% could potentially help. Alternatively enough ram and a disabled paging file could also help. or if you keep it near perfectly defragmented it should run fine. but I've yet to use a defragmenting program in at least 6 or 7 years so I'm not well versed with them.

Click to expand...

I unistalled like 3 or 4 games from steam but it appears the percentage didnt go down what so ever. Im starting to believe its my new keyboard that's cuasing the lag. I defragged for the first time in 4 years,deleted 3 games,got riid of startup programs,used ccleaner and still my games are lagging worse than before I did any of this.

sinofchaos said:

Pierce Elliot said:

sinofchaos said:

Pierce Elliot said:

Just so I know for sure, what's the disk usage at? Used/Free?

Click to expand...

My C Drive is 80% used 20% free. I recently dled a free defragger online that helped defrag my computer at the fraction of the time the windows version would have taken(never defragged in 4 years, windows version would have taken over 48 hours, this other version took only 2 hours)

Click to expand...

if your drive c is less than 750GB then there's your problem. getting it to 35% could potentially help. Alternatively enough ram and a disabled paging file could also help. or if you keep it near perfectly defragmented it should run fine. but I've yet to use a defragmenting program in at least 6 or 7 years so I'm not well versed with them.

Click to expand...

I unistalled like 3 or 4 games from steam but it appears the percentage didnt go down what so ever. Im starting to believe its my new keyboard that's cuasing the lag. I defragged for the first time in 4 years,deleted 3 games,got riid of startup programs,used ccleaner and still my games are lagging worse than before I did any of this.

Click to expand...

Go buy a new, cheap one from walmart then. A 10$ one with wire works just as well as any fancy, scmancy  keyboard.