PC too slow even after format, toss it??

[lunar131313]

Ok, this is the deal. I have a Intel celeron 4 2.19GHZ. Yes I NOW know they suck and why. I also have 768MB of RAM. I also have 2 hard drives, one 30 gig, one 40 gig. The PC itself is about 2 years old.

Here is what happend. One day I download a video from emule.(yes I am stupid for not scanning first). When I watch it I notice it is running very slow and choppy. I figure must be some guy who compressed it wrong or something. Well, next thing I know EVERYTHING is running slow. Now normally I have music in the back ground, messangers open, running MAYA (a 3D animation program) and god knows what else at the same time, and everything runs FINE. I also play alot of games too, mostly just emulators like mame.

Now it is to the point where if I have messanger open, with IE and winamp, all my resources are being used up. So much in fact that when I am typing, it sometimes takes about 2 seconds for the words to appear. Oh, and emulators are out of the question. I can turn everything off and try to play Ms Pac man and it still is insainly slow.

So this is what I did to try and fix it. First I thought, that video must have had a virus! So I instaled and used about every anti virus known and unkown to man and found nothing. Used spyware stuff like ad aware and spybot. Found lots of spyware, got rid of them, problem not fixed. I tried deleting lots of junk I dont need to free up hard drive space. Nothing. Then I decide to back up all my files that I need and format both hard drives. I reinstal windows, and test my emulator. Same thing, slow slow slow. But nothing else is installed, just windows mind you. And I am running the emulator off of a portable hard drive. Ok, so then I just put the emulator on my PC and same thing. Well I format again. This time I dont put any of my old files on my pc. I just try to view an AVI from a trusted website. SLOW SLOW SLOW.

Then someone suggests that its my video card. Well I switch out VG cards.... same thing. Some people suggest its my processor that has died while others says its either it works or not. Some people say it could be my memory but others say if they fail the pc will tell you. Some say I just need to clean my pc, its clean, nothing still.

I am at my wits end. This was not the best PC ever, but it worked fine and got things done, and I was happy. Its not that old, and I dont have enough money to buy a new motherboard and AMD prossor right now. So does this sound fixible or a scrap heap?

 

[Jake_Taylor]

Do u have a 512 and 256 Ram or 3 256 ram I think if u have 512 and 256 it can cause problem sometimes but im not an expert on this

 

[crazylegs]

If your viewing over the net it could be your connection is slow, have you tried viewing something from your machines own hard drive as portable drives can still be choppy viewing directly from them...

what software are you using to view the AVI's....It won't be anything to do with Ram memory it will almost certainly be a software problem....you could try running a different veiwing software...

 

[Me__2001]

what programs do you have running in the background ?

 

[lunar131313]

Thank you for responding to my problem. It doesnt matter if its something on the net or something on my hard drive, as far as something running slow. I have tired useing 3 different programs to view videos, WMP, quick time, and real. But its not just the videos that are slow, its ALL programs, on or off line.

Yes, I have a 512 and a 256. But I have been using them like this since day one and never had any problems.

As far as programs running in th eback ground, I turn off everything I am not useing. For example, I use MSCONFIG to make sure at start up only windows programs run at start up. And I moniter what is running in task manager. I always keep it at a minimum now in days.