X201S freezes for 1 second every so often

[therobyouknow]

I'm trying to work out why my PC freezes/locks up for about a second (the pointer does not move) every so often. This has only been happening for the last 2 days.

My PC spec: ThinkPad X201S 1440x900 i7 2.0GHz 8Gb RAM, 256GB Samsung 840Pro SSD, Windows 8.1 Pro 64bit CalDigit USB 3.0 ExpressCard 34, Ultrabase X200 with DisplayPort to HDMI

In process explorer, there is a very narrow spike associated with the freeze, but it's hard to hover over it an analyse what is causing it:

http://i.stack.imgur.com/fgrXh.jpg

Any ideas?

This answer has some general things to try...
http://superuser.com/a/578286/21353

... but just wondered if the Thinkpad community has seen this specifically


Mod edit: picture too large and no warning. Changed it into a link. Please read the forum rules.

[Ole]

I occasionally get this with my x220 tablet. It seems to be the trackpoint driver, and only affects the trackpoint, as the machine it self actually keep responding.

[therobyouknow]

Thanks I'm almost certain that it's the graphics, though I don't know why this is suddenly happening: I've been using this machine since last October without issue. I am not using the trackpad - I am using a USB mouse. I have also notices that when music was playing when the freeze happened, this stuttered and went metallic sounding.

All I can think of is that there has been an update in Windows or elsewhere that is buggy, though I don't know how to roll back or where to roll back to. Rolling back seems to be a very crude way to pinpoint the issue.

The reason why I think it's the graphics is because, of the times it has frozen for a second or two, a few times out of those occasions, the screen has gone black, to come back with everything being redrawn and a message that "Display Driver Stopped Responding and Has Successfully Recovered" - speech bubble in bottom left of Desktop mode.

I may try a version of the following solutions:

http://www.computertipsfree.com/display ... -vista-xp/

Note that obviously I don't have nVidia on my Lenovo ThinkPad X201s, I have an integrated Intel HD Graphics chipset that I think is on the same die as the i7 CPU. So my steps will be different, if they are possible at all.

The above link works OK and has genuine advice and I am not connected to the site in anyway. The link came from here:

http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/141 ... ccessfully