Problem Details:
Alright, so basically, I would say every 10-15+ seconds I get a random video freeze (not the background video, osu! itself, but the audio doesn't freeze) and this is causing me to fail combos and to enjoy my gameplay. Some of those freezes are pretty small and "endurable" but some are huge and completely ruining the fun. It seems to be my CPU having some spikes randomly, but they are only about 10% higher than when I play osu!. I have put a link to a video showing the lag.

Some backstory :
I've been playing osu! for at least a year on this laptop and never had any problems, any lags or whatever. For about 3 months, I've been suffering from these stuttering/freezes and I stopped playing as much as I used to, only because of this game-ruining problem. I've done my research on this kind of problem, and none of the solutions I have found worked. My laptop is running on two partitions, I've tried installing osu! on the "osu!-not-installed" partition and the problem was still occuring. I tried uninstalling the game, but there was still a problem. I've tried running the game on every mode possible (compatibility using every options, running as admin) and I still had the lags. I've tried to change the game options and nothing helped. I have tried to disable every processes / useless services to see if some interfered with osu!, but that also was not the cause.

Video time tags are in the description of the video so you can jump right before it happens and also so you can actually see the frequence of which it happens.

Here are the specs :

Processor: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-4720HQ 2.60GHz
RAM : 12.0 GB
System : Windows 10 Home 64-bit
Graphics : Nvidia GeForce GTX 960M

I'm running on High Performance whether or not my laptop is plugged (it's always plugged anyway).

Video or screenshot showing the problem:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1yXhVIS__xw

Edit: I also forgot to mention that this is the only game that has ever done that. Ever.

osu! version: 20170103.2 (latest)

Try turning on Compatibility Mode in your osu! settings. Also make sure there are no pop ups that can occurs while you are playing and try not to have any other programs open besides osu

I see your major lags are happening exactly at 1 minute intervals.

Do you happen to have multiple wallpapers set to rotate every minute? If so, this will cause this behaviour.

Hi, and thanks for your responses. For the Compatibility Mode, it is already enabled and there is nothing running other than osu!, I've tried closing everything via system tray and I still have lag.

Regarding the wallpaper, I have a static wallpaper : the same one that I always had, which is the base wallpaper that came with my laptop, which is the MSI logo.

Also, I would like to precise that I do not have any antivirus running. And I will also show my settings for future messages in case it could give any idea to some of you. I know these aren't all necessary, but I will still put them there.


And since this happens only in osu!, could the problem be related to the game itself, or is it.. I don't know... since major lags happen every minute, the infamous Bancho (even when offline) causing those lags?

It seems like you're running in Windowed mode
Run in Fullscreen mode and see if that helps unless you just removed Fullscreen just to make screenshots)

I also noticed you have a tablet, a past problem from before is "Tablet Tuning Utility" which made his osu! Lag in intervals.

If you don't know what's causing the spikes, I suggest in installing [lucky:1337]Process Hacker 2[/lucky:1337] and go to "System Information" and hover over the part when it spikes and see the program responsible for it.

If you still can't find it, you can record process hacker while osu! Is running so you can catch which is the process that spikes in CPU usage. Make sure to sort the processes by CPU

Here is what I came up with when the lag is occuring.. You can't see it very well but it says "Interrupt : 1,10%" which I have no clue what to get from this. Anyway here's the picture


I checked every processes and I couldn't find any with the keyword "utility" related to the tablet. Here are the only processes related to the tablet

Oh wait, that just happened :


with this right after :

Most rundll32 files are prone to viruses or malware
You might need to run a virus scan on your computer.

Seeing as you don't have an AV installed, this might be the apparent case.
You'll have to scan your computer for any malware or viruses

It would still make no sense since I only get the lagspikes while playing osu! and don't have any lag of any kind in any other games.. Anyway I'm already into a complete scan of the PC. Seeing an .exe file running, that I can't find anywhere on my PC, and even can't find it in Task Manager, not taking any chances. I'll give an update tomorrow.

After a complete anti-virus scan, nothing was found at all. So it is confirmed, a virus is not the cause of the freezes. It has to be something else. By the way, I defragged my partition (even though it is set to auto-defrag weekly) and even after the defragging, still couldn't play normally. I've also retried to set priority to "Realtime" but as expected, no change.