my system has suddenly become a dog

Supercell

Up until recently i used to run win2k , then one day it just hung booting and just plain sat there..

So i though it just software gone wrong somehow..so whacked in the win2k disk and tried to install it..all went fine..then on reboot..again..it just sat there at the bootlogo going nowhere..

So , i though maybe it was a hard disk problem..stuck in another..same thing..

Had a copy of WinXP pro ..so installed that..and it works and still does...but...it is a COMPLETE AND UTTER DOG!!!

Everything i do seems to cache to the hard drive, even playing mp3's has the hdd light flickering away which never ever was the case before.

The mobo is a KG7-RAID with 512mb crucial 2.1 DDR memory, cpu is a 1400 athlon thunderbird..yet the system is slower than my old p3 450!! , avi's go out of sysnch , and just about everything causes the hdd to cache like crazy.

I've taken an airblower to the cpu and fan as the temperature was running a little hotter than normal lately (49c) and thats taken it back to about 46c, but neither of those temps are really too high imho for an athlon.

Have flashed the bios also on the advice of a friend ..but as suspected, it made not one iota of difference.

Ran "SiSoftware Sandra 2002 Standard" benchmarks on the various components (cpu memory hdd) ..all seem normal, though these tests only last a few seconds and dont really seem to stress the system at all.

Has anyone got ideas here, am at my wits end trying to understand what the hell has gone wrong

Lenny

Do you hear weird noise's out fo your hard drive?
Like it is struggling or chucking noises

sceptre

Don't see the word "format" in there anywhere.

Have you been formatting the disk (clean install) every time?

Or have you just been installing 2k over itself and then XP on top you bad boy :slap:

Without a clean install you'd be stuck with the registry you had before reinstalling - which is probably one of the problems in the first place.

Apologies if you've been clean installing

Defragging would be a good idea then though. PerfectDisk4 or O&O Defragger get the sceptre seal of approval™. Or ExecSoft Diskeeper if you must.

Supercell

/me isn't THAT silly , i did say i tried another drive..which does rule out software i think and yep clean install was first thing i did.

Suppose i should have said this already, sorry.

BattlingCheese

You have a motherboard with a VIA chipset. Have you tried downloading the latest VIA 4-in-1 drivers. Solved the problem for me with a Abit KT7 board before.

Cake Fiend

Hrm, the fact that W2K suddenly stopped working, and won't reinstall even on another HD would lead me to believe something (e.g. mobo, CPU, RAM) ist kaputt. Check in XP to see if DMA is enabled on your HD. If it isn't, try turning it on and see if it improves things. Also make sure you have up-to-date mobo chipset drivers. If it keeps running like crap, looks like it's a hardware problem.

Saruman

If your hard disk ceeps caching there then there may be a mem leak or something and its having to do some serious file swop... see if you can try different mem.. or if you have a few dims.. try individually!

The_Bullman

i think that there is a program called simtester which can test the ram if you don't have anymore spare

byte

I had similar problem with Win 98SE where it stopped booting altogether. It occasionally siad Windows System Error or something and wouldn't boot. I eventually pulled one of my RAM sticks out followed by another to find the second one was faulty. The PC booted no probs with the dodgy stick removed.

strat

il put money on the power supply being b0rked

Supercell

StrataGIST , half wondering this myself, its the only thing i cannot benchmark, yet memory, cpu, hdd, video and cpu all benchmark as expected...just dont know how this could be causing it.

Really curious as to why you suggested it? , have you experienced somthing similar yourself?

sceptre

Originally posted by Longfield
/me isn't THAT silly

That's why I apologised in advance for mentioning it:)

(bah, first half of sentence dumped - I mistook this for another post)
I'd have guessed the disk controller but you'd certainly have a message on the screen about that or at least some obscure coded beeps

The disk isn't running in PIO mode, is it?

Gerry

Erm, the power supply won't make the machine go SLOWER. If the regulation is bad, the machine will crash when under load, or when going from idle to full load. Since your machine just appears to be slow, the psu isn't the problem. I don't know what the problem is, especially not at this time of the morning

Supercell

I've spare psu's and hdd's lying around the place, so tomorrow gonnat yank out all the pci cards and mess about.

The memory works fine in another pc, so its rules out anyhow.

Have a horrible suspision its a mobo problem now

Is there any way of testing the mobo, like the pci bus etc ?, is about all i havent tested so far apart from the psu.