[talha_81]

I have a very strange problem with winXP on my machine. Once a windows installation gets about two or three months old, it starts behaving very strangely all of a sudden.

Lately I have been getting periodic declivity in performance every two or three seconds. The machine seems to halt for a moment after every few moments and then resumes. I cant listen to music, play games, watch videos or do anything for that matter without having to experience periodic jerks (Cant seem to write CDs successfully at all) . Its also considerably jerky and slow in booting up. This always becomes apparent in old installations and arises all of a sudden, like it was all OK yesterday but its all wrong today.

This problem always goes away when I do a fresh install. but I am sick of it this time. I have tried everything i could think of to avoid reinstall: removing startup things, uninstalling extra software, stopping all services I can, cleaning registry, system restore, repairing installation and defragmenting drive (may be not very thoroughly and not necessarily in that order). Its almost as if winXP has made up its mind to funk with my system no matter what.

Has anybody experienced such problems? What do you suggest I do to get out of this?


PS: My Configuration -

Proc - AMD Athlon 64 3000+
MoBo - MSI K8TNeo
VGA - XFX NVidia 6600GT (128 MB 128 bit)
RAM - Kingston DDR400 2 X 512 MB.
HDD - Seagate Baracuda 120 GB
DVD - Sony DVD +-RW and Sony DVD ROM
PSU - AOpen 450W

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It may be software that you think is essential that is causing the problem. I've had problems with adobe software constantly accessing something even when i don't have the software running. Some AV software causes lots of problems like this. There also may be a heat problem with your computer. When they are running high temps you can get short lockups. I will download speedfan and check temps on problem computers. Speedfan will also tell you what the voltages are going to the motherboard usually. I have had low voltages cause this kind of problem on computers. Heres an illuminating website on power supplies.

http://jonnyguru.blogspot.com/

SRX660

[SRX660]

It may be software that you think is essential that is causing the problem. I've had problems with adobe software constantly accessing something even when i don't have the software running. Some AV software causes lots of problems like this. There also may be a heat problem with your computer. When they are running high temps you can get short lockups. I will download speedfan and check temps on problem computers. Speedfan will also tell you what the voltages are going to the motherboard usually. I have had low voltages cause this kind of problem on computers. Heres an illuminating website on power supplies.

http://jonnyguru.blogspot.com/

SRX660

[talha_81]

well the problem went away when I restored the system to an even earlier date. The only significant software installed during that time were splinter cell chaos theory, Daemon Tools and Alchohol 120% (I was attempting to bypass the [bleep] starforce 3 protection which doesnt let me play games without the CD in the drive) but I dont think they were the software that were causing the problem. Maybe its the starforce drivers or some of the other third pary stuff i was trying.

Guessing from how it turned out, I dont think it was a hardware (PSU) problem. How could it be? I just bought a new branded one. As I said before, it might have been some other faulty software. Seems like I'll never know which software actually was the culprit, since i am not interested to try them again to find out. But the good thing is that using system restore worked.

Talha

[fleamailman]

Curious, could you download and show us a log of your specs. This tool system specs is free, easy and stand alone.

http://www.alexnolan...are/sysspec.htm

Also, have you checked msconfig for what is starting up on your comp,

Also, another program free, easy and stand alone is prcess manager

http://www.sysintern...ssExplorer.html

between these two programs you should see your comp clearer.