Problems After Re-install of XP

[mejum]

I just recently re-installed Windows XP on my primary machine after swapping an Athlon 800 for a XP1800. It ran fine for a few days, but lately has been acting up on me.

I usually leave Winamp playing in the background and when I try to load Firebird or Trillian, the music sometimes distorts or cuts out and then resumes playing. This goes for any program/util, including the calculator or notepad, the sound distorts when loading these programs.

I tried swapping the old 800 in for the XP1800 and it did not make a difference. I have a feeling it is the ram or the primary hard drive as they are the weakest components of the machine. I have no way to be sure though.

I have fallen behind on diagnosing and troubleshooting PC's, any help is appreciated.

 

[23skidoo]

I've learned to avoid a lot of "reinstall" headaches by using the diagnostic utility hard drive maker to do a complete low-level format of the disk before running FDisk to partition the drive and then formatting before installing the os.

 

[johnjkr1]

You could just run the diagnostic to test the hard drive. You can run memtest to test out the memory. I've never had to go nearly as far as 23skidoo recommends and i've done hundreds of reinstalls. When you reinstalled xp, were you connected to the net? You could have gotten a worm. Did you install the chipset drivers? Are there any "other devices", yellow ?'s or !'s in device manager? If you only real issue is sound distortion, did you download and install the latest sound drivers for your sound card?

 

[mejum]

Sorry it has been awhile...

I tested the RAM by switching it out with another DDR stick that a friend lent me. This had no effect on the performance; still sluggish.

I then tested the hard drive with Hitachi's Drive Fitness test and Ontrack Data Advisor. The results showed nothing wrong with the hard drives.

This leads me to believe it is an operating system/software issue.

I use the default sound drivers (SBLive) that come with Windows XP. There is no special chipset for my hard drives so I use the default. The only driver I did install after installing WinXP, and after all the problems, was the video display drivers.

As I posted previously, the performance of programs is very sluggish. When I load programs there is hesitation with the mouse and the load of the program, if there is music playing in the background, it skips/hesitates.

 

[jackschmittusa]

You need to install the mb chipset drivers, including agp, ide, etc.. You should use the latest audio drivers from Creative and update DirectX. There is also no need to do a low level format.

 

[mechBgon]

If you need further help, post your complete system specs so we have more info to go on