So for the last few weeks, I've had this ANNOYING issue with my comp. I run 64-bit Vista and 64-bit 7 RC, and in Vista I can be doing my thing just fine and then all of the sudden everything stutters, music, game, mouse cursor, everything, on and off for a period of a few seconds, then it goes back to normal. This can happen several times in a span of minutes and then be fine for days, sometimes it's ongoing all day with no rhyme or reason. Doesn't seem related to any applications I have open as I've tried closing them, yadda yadda.

I've been staring at my Task Manager for a while trying to pinpoint it and I finally found it. There's a process named simply System, with the description "NT Kernel & System" that, when the comp stutters and lags and all, it spikes up to ~30-50% CPU load. The more the CPU it consumes the worse the lag. Since I found it I've been going through google to see if there's any kind of known problem with it but I don't get any concrete, so I turn to you, BG, to see if anyone here's had any dealings with it or can offer help.

It sounds like it's the general NT Kernel so, of course, I can't disable it or anything, but with the way it's behaving I have to wonder if something is hijacking it or what. Nothing shady was downloaded/installed/updated around the time it started, and nothing is really out of the ordinary as far as comp diagnostics go. And the funniest thing is it doesn't happen in 7 at all (yet).

Basic comp specs:
E8400 @ 3.8ghz or something on a Gigabyte mobo
4 gigs of RAM
Sum hard drives
Radeon HD4850s
Razer Keyboard and Mouse (only including this because when I asked Sono he said it could be linked to USB devices! Always have my iPhone plugged in as well)


Any ideas?