Windows hanging every 5 seconds

Cornish · November 18, 2021

I have a problem that I've been trying to diagnose myself and got part way, but haven't been able to pinpoint exactly so need some help. I really don't want to have to do a clean install of windows as I don't want to have to reinstall and reconfigure everything.

If I'm moving my mouse then windows will hang every 5 seconds for 1 second, or at least the image will, audio continues and when the image restarts the mouse pointer will jump to where it would have been had it not hung (an di fI spun the scroll wheel I get beeps as though the input buffer is full). This is only an issue when I'm moving the mouse but it happens whether I'm in an application or just in the desktop, if I don't touch the mouse then there is no hanging, however, moving the mouse immediately causes a 1 second hang. No other input cases this hang to occur (for example I've had notepad open and held down a ky on the keyboard, the letter was put in without a hang for a 30 seconds, as soon as I moved the mouse it hung)

To try and diagnose this I have:

Booted into safe mode - no hanging

Updated my graphics drivers (AMD) - no effect

Disabled services one by one - no effect

Removed mouse in Device manager and redetected - no effect

reinstalled windows (but on top of existing instance so I didn't have to reinstall all my apps) - no effect

Tried different mice - no effect

Tried differenet USB ports - no effect

Disabled Realtek HD audio drivers (some people online say this helped them) - no effect

Tried to update mouse drivers - can't find a more recent Microsoft HID-compliant mouse driver

Uninstaleld and reinstalled the Logitech software - no effect (also no effect running without Logitech software installed)

Updated the BIOS - no effect

Removed everything bar Windows security from startup - no effect

Changed monitor and connection type - no effect

To try and see if I could see anything more subtle I installed Windows Performance Recorder, there are no spikes on CPU, memory, I/O, storage, power, etc. and the frame rates being reported are consistant. I can see the gaps in the process frame and Windows DWM-core event logs, the gap is consistantly 1.1 seconds long and starts 5 seconds after the end of the previous gap. There don't seem to be any obvious events or processes that line up with the gaps either...

Unfortuantely I can't say exactly when this started, but it was sometime in the last fortnight (I had been running with a dying monitor that flickered for that period). As I said above, I really don't want to have to clean install, but it's getting to the point where I'm out of any better ideas...

For reference System spec:

Ryzen 2600 (not OC)

XFX Radeon 580 8GB (not OC)

Asus Prime 450m-K

16GB RAM @ 2666Mhz (not OC)