Question for the Computer Savy

[Bajaratt]

About three weeks ago, I decided to upgrade my computer, it was a store-bought model that I bought quickly because my laptop had just died in a power storm, so I needed pretty much anything that would run decently. The only thing I had modified was the graphics card, because that was the only truely shitty thing on there; and I went with a GeForce 6600, because the computer did not have PCI-E. That was about 3 years ago.

So, my old computer had a 2.1 GHz cpu, with 1 gig of PC2700 RAM and a GeForce 6600. I replaced the CPU, motherboard, RAM and graphics card; so my new computer has a AMD Athlon dual core 5600, 2 GB of PC6400 RAM (it's 4-4-4-12, but I have no clue what the hell that means) and I grabbed a GeForce 7300 because my new motherboard didn't have an AGP slot so I needed a PCI-E card; and they were dirt cheap with some sale going on(I'll probably get something better later, just needed something to start with). No where near a top of the line machine, but supposedly a huge boost over my old computer and all for about $300.

That's the background and some of the the technical part of my situation, now on to the problem. My computer at times runs slow as shit, for no reason that I can discern. Booting up takes around 4-5 minutes, every time; winrar can take hours to unpack, some programs just take forever to load up. When I upgraded my system, I couldn't increase any of settings on any games(Overlord and now Bioshock) because the performance would suffer just as bad as my first computer would.

I know that it's a problem with my computer and not just a heavy work load, because on my roommate's computer I have done the same tasks and it took significantly less time. I tried unpacking a game with winrar and after 10 minutes it there was no sign of progress, I stopped the unrar, threw it on an external, and had my roommate try it on his computer and it took 10 minutes to unpack the whole thing. Now, his computer is about a year older than my old computer, and I gave him some of my hand-me-downs(512 RAM stick, taking him to 1 gig and my old graphics card), but he's still running a 1.8 GHz machine and in several areas it's outperforming my own. Now, my question is: WHY?

I've checked my task manager and shut down everything that I can to try to optimize performance; and it looks like my CPU power is barely even being used, and that's just one of the cores. I have my anti-virus(NOD32) set to scan every night while I'm asleep, I run spybot and an adware program peridocially, I defragged all of my hard drives before I upgraded and again afterwards, but I still have yet to find any reason for why my upgrade didn't upgrade a goddamn thing aside from a Store's profit margins. For the most part I had the same problems before I upgraded, so I don't think it's a hardware issue unless I got a bunch of defective products. I'm thinking there might be something running that's just eating up resources, but I can't find it anywhere; I'm considering formatting and starting over, but I really don't want to do that unless I have to.

Any ideas?

 

[Acks]

If your CPU isn't being utilized like it should, it might be the CPU you're using isn't compatible with your old mobo. You should look into flashing your old motherboard with the latest firmware available.

The other thing is, if it's taking 4-5 min to boot, you might have some crap running in startup. start menu->run, type msconfig, go to the startup tab, and see what programs you have starting up.

 

[Bajaratt]

I said I replaced my old motherboard with a new one, my old board wouldn't handle a dual core since it came out before those were ever made.

The only thing in that folder is Microsoft Outlook.

 

[Acks]

Ah, missed that. It just sounds like the CPU isn't being used correctly. What mobo are you using?

 

[CmdrFly]

What about your HD? Has it been reformatted since the hardware change?

I've tried swapping drives between different computers at work here, and while it's not always a pain it's hardly ever smooth. I've seen some scenarios like what you're experiencing when I moved a HD from one hardware platform to another.

If you haven't yet, do the dirty. Backup yo shits and reformat.

 

[Tristam Green]

I said I replaced my old motherboard with a new one, my old board wouldn't handle a dual core since it came out before those were ever made.

The only thing in that folder is Microsoft Outlook.

ctrl+r >> msconfig is a much more verbose way of finding your startup programs. start>all programs>startup is really only scratching the surface.

you could look for vendor-specific software, like the winamp agent/qttask(quicktime) et al. within msconfig, if you can recognize the task and don't want it to startup with the OS, uncheck it and save the configuration. it will require a restart.

 

[Bajaratt]

What about your HD? Has it been reformatted since the hardware change?

I've tried swapping drives between different computers at work here, and while it's not always a pain it's hardly ever smooth. I've seen some scenarios like what you're experiencing when I moved a HD from one hardware platform to another.

If you haven't yet, do the dirty. Backup yo shits and reformat.

No, I hadn't, I was hoping that I wouldn't have to, but since I couldn't find anything wrong I was considering it.

 

[CmdrFly]

ctrl+r >> msconfig is a much more verbose way of finding your startup programs.

I think you mean Winkey + R... Ctrl + R doesn't bring up the Run dialog for me.

 

[Tristam Green]

I think you mean Winkey + R... Ctrl + R doesn't bring up the Run dialog for me.

d'oh; yes. apologies to baj for the faulty information.

winkey+r = run >> msconfig to bring up the Microsoft Configuration Dialog.

 

[Bajaratt]

Eh, usually i just go to run in the start menu, I didn't even know about the winkey + R; but I knew what you were talking about. Thanks for the info though, I turned a couple things off that had no listing at all, so I figure it's probably for the best that they're not running.

 

[Sharpe]

What about your HD? Has it been reformatted since the hardware change?

I've tried swapping drives between different computers at work here, and while it's not always a pain it's hardly ever smooth. I've seen some scenarios like what you're experiencing when I moved a HD from one hardware platform to another.

If you haven't yet, do the dirty. Backup yo shits and reformat.

Agreed. You should really format regularly anyway. I usually defrag weekly and re-format every 4 months or so.

 

[Tristam Green]

Agreed. You should really format regularly anyway. I usually defrag weekly and re-format every 4 months or so.

\

I concur, and like most that concur with these statements, I don't practice what I preach. It's been about....3.5 years since I rebuilt my desktop machine.

Sad days, but now that I have my laptop, I can do it

 

[alanon]

What antivirus program are you using? Your problem seems suspiciously like symantec. Just as a test, remove your virus program and run some tests. Some AV's are a little too aggressive.

 

[Bajaratt]

I had heard from a few random places on the internet to reformat every so often, and I had planned to reformat my old computer about 2 months ago. My step-father, who was going to help me get everything set back up recommeneded against it and said that a format shouldn't be something you should do often. Since he's an engineer, I was trusting his judgment better than random posts on the internet; but I'm still considering it, especially now.

 

[Bajaratt]

What antivirus program are you using? Your problem seems suspiciously like symantec. Just as a test, remove your virus program and run some tests. Some AV's are a little too aggressive.

As I said, I'm running NOD32. I was having these problems before I installed it, I've used Norton, AVG and NOD32, had the same problem with all of them.

 

[Bedwarmer]

Personally I've used about every anti-virus program out there and found them all to be gigantic, sluggish, memory grubbing sluts, until I went to Webroot Spy Sweeper about 2 years ago, and have never even been tempted to look back.

Sometimes when replacing a mobo and introducing changes to such a radical extent with an existing HDD, a nice CMOS wipe helps. I recently upgraded from some antiquated ASUS board to a new model ABIT, and a CMOS wipe was needed to get shit moving again.

On a side note, I don't know if it was just bad luck on my end or what, but I had tremendous problems with the Nvidia 7 series. I burned 7 of them (SLI), yes 7, in a little over a year. The last one I had was causing post errors as well as horrible performance issues.

Out of curiosity, are you running that abortion Vista?

 

[Tristam Green]

Out of curiosity, are you running that abortion Vista?

I lol'd hard.

My new laptop has lolVista running on it. While pretty, it's easily more of a resource hog than my most loaded XP machine.

 

[Bajaratt]

Fuck no, I'm using XP. Vista would explain the lack of improvement in performance, but that's precisely why I'm not using it. I'm not planning on staying with the 7300, I just needed a PCI-E card since my AGP card was no longer supported on new motherboards. It was only $30 after a rebate, so I just got it as a temporary measure.

Thanks for all the help guys, it's looking like a format is in my future, but I'll hold off on deciding that for a little while, until I'm out of other ideas on ways to improve performance. Should I format every hard drive I have, or just the main one with the operating system on it?

Edit: Also, for my other games(overlord, bioshock), is my card/computer just not powerful enough to run at higher settings, or could that be something else improved by a format? It's quite annoying to be forced to play at low settings when I should be able to run at at least medium level.

 

[Mistra]

Just the one you use to boot the OS with should be fine. Personally it still sounds like a processor problem. Some motherboards are just iffy. Baj get back to us on the format.

*edit* and yes, your 7000 series Gforce is just outdated is all. Works fine, but you will not be able to max most modern gen games.

 

[Bajaratt]

The motherboard and CPU were bundled together in the sale, so I figured they worked well together. Is there a website or something where I can find out if they'd work together or not? Or, if you have any idea, this is the motherboard.

I'm backing up all of the files that I want to save onto one of my externals right now in preparation for formatting. Depending on how long it takes, I might try it this weekend.

One question that I have about formatting my hard drive is about reinstalling windows. Rather than give me a windows CD that would be useful, part of my hard drive is partitioned with the installation files loaded onto it. When I format the hard drive, will it wipe that partition away or leave it alone, because as far as my computer is concerned, the partition is another hard drive. Also, how would I go about loading windows onto my hard drive after I format?

I might just break the parition, delete the files and use someone else's windows XP CD for the installation; it'd be nice to have a few more gigs of hard drive space, but I wasn't sure if I'd be able to use any windows XP CD or if I had to use the partitioned files.

Edit: Yeah, I knew the card wasn't good enough to run them maxed out, I was just hoping it'd be strong enough to turn up the graphics from my old card. Oh well, it was only a temporary thing anyways. I'll probably ask for/buy another graphics card around christmas. What are some of the better cards out now? I might grab one in a couple months when the prices are lower, but I don't understand a lot of the features they brag about on the boxes so I'm not sure what advantages one card has over another aside from memory size.