Getting buffer problems in Live now

Okay everything has been pretty sweet running in Live for a few years but for the past few days I've been getting a lot of buffering .... you know basically the standard clicking and popping. The odd thing is that it seems to do this when it claims its only using say 20-25% of the processor. Plus I'm pretty use to what the limits are with this pc and I'm not pushing them on said tracks. Usually I'm use to it buffering when it hits about 50% but this seems odd.

I'm gonna do a defrag now but any suggestions would be much welcome as reinstalling the os would be a real pain. Incidently I'm running Ram Idle and I'm not sure if that's causing this problem or not because it seemed to occur around the same time I installed however when I disabled the program the problem still occured. Anyone had any bad experiences with Ram Idle because mine in the past had usually been fairly good.

All thoughts appreciated. Cheers.

if you have asio you can increase/tweak the buffer amount in ableton's settings (might be able to do this with other drivers too, dunno). you can also set audio clips (anything rendered etc) to RAM mode to free up CPU.

aside from that it's your usaul 'check for extra processes' windows shindig.

You might need a defrag? When it clicks and pops, does the hard drive light fire?

Yes, I do believe the hard drive light fires when it clicks and pops as well I can hear it struggling at the same time. And I've now done a defrag too and sadly it hasn't really made a lot of difference. Also I've been keeping a check on Processes to monitor processor usage and it just generally isn't coping.

I have a niggling feeling that this pc maybe on its last legs or something because everything seems okay but its not coping too well.

I'm now gonna have to start to back up everything before this pc truly goes caput.