What causes my computers to lag?

Sometimes when I play video games on my laptop and computer, they lag. I don't run any other programs and I don't have any viruses. I have all the requirements to play the game and I disable my firewall. There's more than enough free space on each computer and I haven't downloaded anything lately and I have DSL which isn't as good as RoadRunner, but it's fast enough.

Another time, neither of my computers lag, but when I play against my cousin, it gets so laggy, that we both turned invisble in the game. Everything's been fine for the past 2 months. Do I need to port-forward my router or get better internet?

What causes my computers to lag?download

So if playing the games locally, it doesn't lag, but the online play does, it has something to do with the Internet connection.

Are you using a wireless connection on the notebook to connect to your router? If so, try switching it to a direct wired connection.

I've seen performance gains from that alone.

If wireless, you might have been picking up interference from other wireless networks, or devices.

What causes my computers to lag?hijackthis

Broadband is usually faster. Look into it.
go to microsoft under downloads,get "spy bot search and destroy" follow the prompts,defrag your computer to,then delete anything your nt currently useing

should fix the problem
Do you mean lag as in choppy movements, and slow cursor movements?

Or do you mean long delays between results whenever you perform an action?

If the first, then you probably need some better hardware.

If the second, then you probably need some better internet. If you have a program that sucks up your bandwidth (like torrents), then exit it.

Perhaps defragment your computer occasionally.
too much services starting up

viruses

rootkits

trojans

need defragment