[Greg McKaskle]

I think your guess about Win7 activity is a good one. I've seen spikes of about 70 seconds on some other teams. If the spikes are there in all robot modes, even disabled, and there when tethered, that is a strong indicator that it is the laptop SW.

If you open the task manager, sort by CPU usage, and wait for the spike, you should see a process jump to the top. I have seen web page content cause it, and be warned that task manager will make its own one second ripple. Once you know what it is, you should be able to take appropriate action.

I'm curious if you are running the Windows Explorer, of if you setup the DS as the shell? Another thing you could try is to elevate the priority of the DS, but don't get carried away.

Greg McKaskle