A:Answer What operating system are you running? Antivirus? Etc.?
I do full HD video-editing on mine and occasionally Microsoft will run some program in the background that hangs my computer. The easiest way to check is to fire up Task Manager and watch to see if anything causes either your CPU or Memory (or, to a lesser extent, Hard Drive) to hit 100%. If you see one that does, you may not be able to run that in the background.
To disable background programs, click on the "Startup" tab of Task Manager and disable anything that you don't want / need running in the background. (When in doubt, search for them on the Internet.) You can also still deactivate programs using MSCONFIG - do this ONLY if you know what you're doing! - and you can also disable "Services" - do this ONLY if you know what you're doing, too! If you disable the wrong thing, you CAN AND WILL mess up your system!
Finally, my kids are pretty serious gamers and don't want lag as they play. Despite having some pretty good systems, they still have to shut down Google Chrome tabs, save and close documents, etc. BEFORE they run the game. Turn off as much as you can before launching any big applications.
(This is just a start. You can also do virus scans, defragment non-SSD hard drives, check Windows for glitches, and more! I just figured this would get you started!)
