An update on recent technical problems and more from the admin: https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/250292/on-technical-difficulties-mod-coverage-and-other-things/p1?new=1
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Troubleshooting slow PC
TexiKen
Dammit!That fish really got me!Registered User regular
Dammit!That fish really got me!Registered User regular
So, my computer has started to act really slow, and I'm just looking to see what other things I need to check/find out what the problem is.
Specs:
Windows XP
350W Antec Power Supply
AMD Athlon x2 4200
Samsung 250Gig SATA drive
Asus M2NPV-VM motherboard
ATI Radeon X1600 video card 512 MB
2 gigs Corsair value select memory (4 x 512 sticks)
I built this computer last summer, and so far it has given me no problems. However, I start it up yesterday morning, and it takes a long time for the transition from the log in screen to hearing the Windows welcome music. I can hover my mouse over the icons and get an immediate response, but when I double click on the icons it takes forever to load up. It will take a minute (I timed it) for the actual execution of a task, like opening the MY Documents folder.
And then it just speeds up and gets back to normal. I thought it was a virus, but all my spyware tools and virus scans (Avast and Adaware/Spybot) show no virus or spyware. I cleaned the registry and defragmented just to be safe.
But it will act normal. But then it will slow down again, like when I watch a video in Media Player and then my scheduled spyware scanner will run atr the same time and it gets constipated again.
I've blown all the dust out of the system, I've taken out the memory to check to see if their may be a faulty one, but they all check out fine. I've taken out the video card to see if that was busted. That's good too.
The only thing it could be, unless someone can point me otherwise, is either the Hard Drive is starting to give out or it could be the Power Supply going crappy.
So, any ideas? I've backed up all my pertinent data just in case I need to reformat.
Thanks in advance.
Specs:
Windows XP
350W Antec Power Supply
AMD Athlon x2 4200
Samsung 250Gig SATA drive
Asus M2NPV-VM motherboard
ATI Radeon X1600 video card 512 MB
2 gigs Corsair value select memory (4 x 512 sticks)
I built this computer last summer, and so far it has given me no problems. However, I start it up yesterday morning, and it takes a long time for the transition from the log in screen to hearing the Windows welcome music. I can hover my mouse over the icons and get an immediate response, but when I double click on the icons it takes forever to load up. It will take a minute (I timed it) for the actual execution of a task, like opening the MY Documents folder.
And then it just speeds up and gets back to normal. I thought it was a virus, but all my spyware tools and virus scans (Avast and Adaware/Spybot) show no virus or spyware. I cleaned the registry and defragmented just to be safe.
But it will act normal. But then it will slow down again, like when I watch a video in Media Player and then my scheduled spyware scanner will run atr the same time and it gets constipated again.
I've blown all the dust out of the system, I've taken out the memory to check to see if their may be a faulty one, but they all check out fine. I've taken out the video card to see if that was busted. That's good too.
The only thing it could be, unless someone can point me otherwise, is either the Hard Drive is starting to give out or it could be the Power Supply going crappy.
So, any ideas? I've backed up all my pertinent data just in case I need to reformat.
Thanks in advance.
TexiKen on
0
Posts
Earthwatts rock.
Check and see what programs are loading up as you start windows. If you can, try and post a list here of what you find suspicious and what you don't understand. Most of the time you can just Google the process and get the results you need but there are a few exceptions.
After all that I'd then say HDD but before you buy a new one I say format that drive (a full format) and install Windows and see if it still has issues.
EDIT: Samsung Hard drives are not top of the line in reliability. Stick with Western Digital or Seagate, although Seagate has been a little flaky as of late, their warranty can't be beat.
It seems I'm getting some bad blocks every 2-3 minutes on the Event Viewer, with the Event 7 being all of them. It's about 80% of the event viewer,
The other 20% being the information balloon with the event # being 62486.
Um....the disk is f'ed in the a, isn't it?
Edit: and violynt, it is a smartpower PS. It came with the Antec case (it's a SOnata model form a year back, the model # I can't find right now).