Windows 7 32 bit, up to date, Intel i7 860. (For some reason the company runs 32bit Windows everywhere.) I tried to update all motherboard drivers etc. as far as possible.
I have a performance issue with a machine which appears in connection with multithreading (or so I think).
As an example (and where I most often see it, but it appears on other programs as well): ProteoWizard is a file conversion tool for mass spectrometry files. I can add a list of files and it will attempt to process up to 8 files in parallel (quadcore x 2 threads/core). If I choose 1 to 6 files, I start the process and it goes straight through. If I have >=7 files in the queue, conversion goes to ~20%, then gets stuck for 15 seconds, then continues again, always in "chunks" of a few % before getting stuck again.
During the time the process is stuck, CPU is at 1%. RAM is not limiting, it is maybe at 70% or so and not going up.
I don't get the same problem on other, even slower machines.
The computer gets also stuck at 1% CPU doing nothing on other occasions, but for multithreading it is most frequent.
Where should I look for the problem?
System Information screenshot showing problem http://i.minus.com/ibtjBN8RCsl7UV.png
Edit: See this screenshot from Process Explorer; nothing is at the limits. CPU is flat, RAM is constant at e.g. 60%, I/O is flat, GPU is flat, network is flat, disk is flat. You see exactly how far the process ran fine and where it grinds to a halt. At first, 2 of the 8 threads continue working, then they die down too.