PC lagging after crash

[jayanath]

The PC crashed while i was trying to adjust the video in cable to the "TV card"... by crashed i mean the dark blue screen with a lot of words that doesn't make much sense(at least to me).

After I restarted the computer was considerably slow..
1) Firefox wouldn't start as soon as i start windows and open the shortcut
2) Windows takes more time to open up.
3) The windows log-on screen takes awfully long to show, about one or two mins... the three dots would only pass three cycles before the user selection screen shows usually but now i can eat breakfast while i watch the loading screen
4) The start up sound has a lag or two before the desktop shows.
5) Cursor lag for the first ten or so mins.

Then it restarted two or three times the day after. So i uninstalled the "TV card" and i removed it from the PCI slot... Maybe it was me but it seemed to be fine just after that. I didn't get time to sit on the PC for a few days. And now about a week or so after the computer is lagging at startup

I have a Intel P4, 1Gb ddr ram, Windows xp, nVidia geforce 6800XT, 200GB HD(didn't check which brand) and a 500GB WD hard drive(which i installed my self) XP is installed on a 50gb NTFS partition on the 200GB drive.

That's about all the problems i can find for now. Any suggestions would be appreciated. Sorry its long

 

[mpilchfamily]

You may want to run Memtest. Google it and you'll find it.

BTW that screen you got is called the BSOD (Blue Screen Of Death). Most of the time when that pops up there is an issue with the RAM or HDD which is why i recommend running Mem test. This will scan the memory and report if there is any problems with it. If there is a problem with the RAM then that would slow your system down.

 

[jayanath]

I downloaded memtest.. google turned up a lot of results so i took the one that says free
I ran it for about twenty minutes.. The pc seems to get slower and slower. Even solitaire slows down
Firefox seems to be even slower... it crashed just about when i was going to run memtest...

What do i do??

 

[mpilchfamily]

OK so you downloaded memtest and burned it to a disk right? Memtest has to be put on a bootable disk then ran. It will run threw many test and should take an hour or so to run threw the full gamit of tests. So you have to leave it up and running for a while. It will continue to loop threw the tests untill you stop it. If any errors pop up then that means your RAM is going bad.

But you can also check your system tray and make sure you don't have allot of applications running in the background that are eating op system resources. So check the Task Manager and see what is taking up the CPU cycles if any.

If there is nothing eating up the system resources and the RAM is showing errors in Memtest then you need to replace the RAM.

 

[jayanath]

i downloaded two files from two different sites... the first one was an iso file. The other one was an exe file. I didnt bother reading any of the manuals or anything. The files were both less than five mb which confuses me

ok i jus burned the iso file to a cd and it burnt a folder called "BOOT". Theres a Security catalog file and a an .img file in there.

I have no idea what to do with it

 

[mpilchfamily]

You burn the iso file to a CD as a boot CD. Then restart your system and boot from that CD. It will load up the program and start running the tests for you.

 

[jayanath]

Ok. Thanks for the info but i'll have to wait till tomorrow to check it out

 

[jayanath]

I ran memtest for about an hour and half and it finished and said there were no errors. Where do i go from here

 

[RadiclDreamer]

I would then check the cpu temperature.

 

[jayanath]

I checked the current working temperature of the cpu just now using something called "EVEREST" and its 60. Only Windows Media Player is running now. Is there a better way to measure the temperature. The Gpu temperature is about the same (52 or something)