Formatting Issue

[Acehawk74]

Hey everyone. I was wondering if i could get some insight to what is going on with my computer here. I formatted last night because i suspected a virus/spyware even though none of my scanners were picking it up. I was having problems clicking links, and i kept getting wierd popups, as well as ceartin links just simply didn't work. Additionally, i found my system starting to slow down. So, i formatted, figuring that would clear up any issue. Well.. ever since then, I installed XP Home, all the drivers, and now things have gotten worse. Before i formatted, i was able to do all the following with relative ease, no real problems.

My system seems to lag immensly when running 2 apps, 1 on my secondary monitor, 1 on my primary monitor.

I consistently get random stoppages, my system locks up, and about 20 seconds later, it unfreezes.

I have 2 devices that I can't even install drivers for (WinTV 150 PVR) and a Texas Instrument Calculator driver.. as when i start the process the computer just restarts.

Overall, things just seem slow, Pokertracker, which usually imports at a reasonable speed took 8 minutes to import 3811 hands. That.. seems excessive. The only programs i put on the system were Mozilla, WoW, Empire Poker, Pokertracker, and WinRar.

Sorry that this is so winded, i just felt it better to describe the symptoms in detail. Could this be a bad hard drive? Or could my Ram have gone bad? I really pray that the Mobo isn't shot, because that would get costly. Any insight on how to fix this would be greatly appreciated. Here are my system Specs:


1.65 gigahertz AMD Athlon XP
Motherboard: ASUSTeK Computer INC. A7V8X-X REV 1.xx
1 GB PC2700 Ram
RADEON 9600 SERIES [Display adapter]

[MyMindIsGoing]

If you wanna test your ram I suggest this http://www.memtest86.com/ best ramtester I seen.

Given the scope of your problems it could be quite a few things. First though I'd start with checking your system for heat related issues, i.e. did a fan die and the cpu got cooked. Then check the BIOS and see if the power supply is putting out enough juice (there's 3 voltages common to the PC 3v for the floppy disk, 5v for the IDE devices, and 12 volt for the CPU except for the P4 which needs additional power, 24v total if I recall I haven't run intel in a long time ;-). While the BIOS isn't completely accurate it can sometimes reveal a bad powersupply. Do you have more than one stick of memory, if so then pull one out and see how it runs. If it's stilled effed pull that one out and replace it with the other. If it's still effed run the ramtest app above (you could run it first but why bother if you can figure it out without having to sit through a ram test). If you built the machine yourself unless you bought the HD as an OEM drive the drivers disk should have diagnostic tools you can run to verify the disk is still good. If you don't have the disk check the manufacturers web page you should be able to find something there. Asus is usually pretty good with diagnostics you should be able to find some tools on their website to test the MB. If all of this seems like too much trouble maybe a repair shop would be an option. Personally I sometimes just don't want to deal with it and don't mind paying for someone else to fix it for me, depending on cost of course.

What format method did you use? Do it perform smoothly, or did it take much longer then you expected?

Listen to you box and see if you can hear the hard drive spinning up and spinning back down? (use a screwdriver as a stethoscope if you need to). A hard drive failing in this fashion will often times 'still work'...eventually. The lag you seen when this happens is very similar to what you've described.

Did you take all Windows Updates following the fresh installation and prior to installation of any third party applications?