Big trouble

[David]

Hello,

I've recently started having extensive problems with my computer. I'll
try to give as much info as possible, but feel free to ask me for more if
it might help.

I have a fairly new machine (AMD 1.2ghz, 768mb ram, ati 7500) with WinXP
SP1 that i use mainly as a backup/music machine. Up until recently, it's
been working just fine. What's started happening is this:

1) Everything takes FOREVER to do. I.e. if I click a program launch icon
from the desktop, it can take several minutes for it to start. If I click
the start button, it can take a minute to open. You get the picture....
It's VERY frustrating.

2) It takes FOREVER to boot up. Sometimes 5+ minutes. Also has trouble
shutting down....



So, being a long-time windows user, I'm fairly knowledgeable about the
various tricks usable to fix a machine....

Here's what I've tried so far:

1) Defragged the hard drive.
2) Reinstalled Win XP.
3) Ran chkdsk on all drives. This DID come up with some errors that it
presumably fixed for me....
4) Thinking it may perhaps have been an older drive, I pulled out the C
drive and reinstalled Windows on the other drive.
5) On this new installation, I installed the newest drivers for my video
card, sound card, and the newest Direct X.
6) Ran Norton Utilities WinDoctor, SpeedDisk.
7) Ran Sissoft Sandra. This didn't seem to come up with any bottlenecks.

I've started to despair.

The funny thing is, if I have the Task Manager open, it doesn't look like
the CPU is having a hard time with anything, but it still takes forever
for anything to happen anyway. Also, the machine doesn't seem to have
problems with processor intensive things once it's started them (mp3
playing, disk/system scanning)....

Not sure what to do here... Seems like it must be a hardware problem,
right? Is there any way to diagnose this, i.e. software or such? If I
knew it was a faulty CPU or something, I'd just get another, but not
being sure doesn't help me much...

Am going to try putting in a different video card after work, but other
than that I'm completely tapped out for ideas of what to do....

Any help is very much appreciated.

david

 

[OKlier]

do you have 'Autoupdate" turned on? If so this causes the computer to slow
down when its trying to install the updates.

 

[davetest]

Hello,

I've recently started having extensive problems with my computer. I'll
try to give as much info as possible, but feel free to ask me for more if
it might help.

I have a fairly new machine (AMD 1.2ghz, 768mb ram, ati 7500) with WinXP
SP1 that i use mainly as a backup/music machine. Up until recently, it's
been working just fine. What's started happening is this:

1) Everything takes FOREVER to do. I.e. if I click a program launch icon
from the desktop, it can take several minutes for it to start. If I click
the start button, it can take a minute to open. You get the picture....
It's VERY frustrating.

2) It takes FOREVER to boot up. Sometimes 5+ minutes. Also has trouble
shutting down....



So, being a long-time windows user, I'm fairly knowledgeable about the
various tricks usable to fix a machine....

Here's what I've tried so far:

1) Defragged the hard drive.
2) Reinstalled Win XP.
3) Ran chkdsk on all drives. This DID come up with some errors that it
presumably fixed for me....
4) Thinking it may perhaps have been an older drive, I pulled out the C
drive and reinstalled Windows on the other drive.
5) On this new installation, I installed the newest drivers for my video
card, sound card, and the newest Direct X.
6) Ran Norton Utilities WinDoctor, SpeedDisk.
7) Ran Sissoft Sandra. This didn't seem to come up with any bottlenecks.

I've started to despair.

The funny thing is, if I have the Task Manager open, it doesn't look like
the CPU is having a hard time with anything, but it still takes forever
for anything to happen anyway. Also, the machine doesn't seem to have
problems with processor intensive things once it's started them (mp3
playing, disk/system scanning)....

Not sure what to do here... Seems like it must be a hardware problem,
right? Is there any way to diagnose this, i.e. software or such? If I
knew it was a faulty CPU or something, I'd just get another, but not
being sure doesn't help me much...

Am going to try putting in a different video card after work, but other
than that I'm completely tapped out for ideas of what to do....

Any help is very much appreciated.

david

When you reinstalled XP on the second drive, was it unresponsive
immediately, or only after you installed all your drivers and apps?

If after, then there's probably a software issue somewhere.
Have you tried looking in the event viewer for clues?
Dave

 

[David]

Yes, I think I do. (Am away from that machine right now.)

I'll trying turning it off, but it seems to be slow no matter what's
happening. Doesn't look like it's downloading anything....

 

[David]

Yes, it was unresponsive right off the bat.
I haven't reinstalled any software yet. Only the latest drivers for sound,
video to try to debug.

I'm not familiar with the event viewer. Can you go into more detail?

Thanks.

 

[davetest]

Yes, it was unresponsive right off the bat.
I haven't reinstalled any software yet. Only the latest drivers for sound,
video to try to debug.

I'm not familiar with the event viewer. Can you go into more detail?

Thanks.

The event viewer is a very useful tool.
It's the place where you can get access to logged messages,
be they error or info.
Type in eventvwr.msc from the RUN box and peruse the application,
security and system related messages.

Dave