performance problems

[hexum]

The machine I'm using right now was my first attempt at building a system, as well as my first AMD system. I am extremely happy with it's performance... or should I say was?
A new problem arises from the mist! While playing games (and probably even while not) my comp will pause briefly for about a second, then resume. This happens every couple minutes or so and it never happened before. Also, while playing video, the hard drive light will flicker every 5 seconds or so, and at the same time as the flicker, the video will stutter.
Wether these two problems are related or not, I don't know, but they both arose at the same time. If anyone has had this prob before or knows what is causing them, any help is very appreciated.

[FRANK]

First of all do some routine maintenance, run the scan disk and de-fragment your hard drive.

It also sounds like you may have too many applications running in the background.

Go to "START>RUN, type in "msconfig" (no quotes) open, click on the start up tab. Once the page is open, take a look at what's running in the background. All of the applications running will take some of the resources available, try to limit what's running to what's needed "explorer, sys tray etc." you may also want to keep your antivirus software running as well. Some applications such as MS OFFICE are very big resource hogs and unless you really need this one running, disable it on start up.

The IDE light is an indicator of hard drive activity, unless you are accessing the hard drive for files, it sounds like you may benefit from more memory. If you don't see an increase in performance after cleaning up the start up and performing routine maintenance, try another stick of RAM.