[Sdelgiudice]

Hello all--

Let me start off with the basics-- I'm running an HP pavillion DV8000 with an AMD turion64 processor, 1gb RAM.

problem: i've had to do a complete reformatting of partition and restoring of this computer a whopping 3 times since june. At this point, it's getting kind of rediculous and i've decided to come here before going to the store and getting smacked with a $130 charge for inspection and then who knows how much more for anything else.

Anyways, it breaks down like this-- the computer will be running fine and then will begin to lock up-- the first time for reasons i can't specifically remember, the second time while using photoshop and listening to music, and the third time while synching my ipod on itunes. After the lock-up, it usually begins to work again albeit very slowly, until i restart the computer- that's when the problems start- my computer currently takes 5 to 10 minutes to load, usually stopping at the windows logo screen with the load bar at the bottom, then finally moving to the XP welcome screen where it usually takes several more minutes. when it finally plays the opening music theme for windows, it does so in a crackling, choppy way and then operates extremley slowly afterwards...

examples: whenever i try to operate two programs simultaneously, i will often lose complete control of the computer, often not being able to even move the cursor around for several minutes at a time...

sound and video pops every several seconds... the one thing i've been able to notice is that usually the light indicating the hard drive is reading/writing turns on at about the same time that it skips, even if i'm streaming video.




other than the drive light thing, i've come to a couple other conclusions:

it cannot be a virus/spyware. I litterally did a full format/reinstall of windows on the 3rd of October (yeah. 2 days ago) and the problem begun again shortly after using itunes (which i had just reinstalled)

well.. now that i think about it, that's about it. Any suggestions? I've already tried disabling all unnecessary itmes on the startup tab.. other than that, i'm open to any help.

thanks in advance!

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did you ever use system recovery and not system restore

you should have one

[Gophergutz]

In my experience, the choppy audio at start-up is usually caused by any anti-virus software you have loaded. As a test, you can go into your AV software and tell it not to scan .wav files. If the music sounds better after doing that, you've found your culprit.
As for the slow boot, there are only a million things at play there. Microsoft has a utility called Bootvis that you can download from their website and use to monitor the boot processes.
Additionally, check with HP for any updated drivers or firmware that might have been released since you purchased the PC.
Also, it could be a bad memory stick...though unlikely unless you're getting blue-screens. But still, it's possible.
Anyway, I have a feeling that much of it is Anti Virus related.

Good luck and hope this works!!

Edited by Gophergutz, 04 October 2006 - 10:36 PM.