Just reformatted a PC and its sooo slow

philjayj · 21 Jan 2008 at 19:57

I have just installed a brand new hard drive in a PC, installed windows and upgraded the RAM to 1GB. But for some reason the PC is unbelievably slow.

Also, even though it has 1GB of RAM, XP says it only has 256MB.

Would this have anything to do with their being no chipset drivers being installed yet?

Thanks

fester · 21 Jan 2008 at 20:10

RLBUHT said:
I have just installed a brand new hard drive in a PC, installed windows and upgraded the RAM to 1GB. But for some reason the PC is unbelievably slow.

Also, even though it has 1GB of RAM, XP says it only has 256MB.

Would this have anything to do with their being no chipset drivers being installed yet?

Thanks

Some more details would be handy ie. motherboard ,ram, the type and number of sticks.

MumboJumbo · 21 Jan 2008 at 20:13

might be a corruprted installation of windows. As far as i nkow the chipset drivers are only essential when overclocking? could be wrong there. I remember someone saying taht somewhere though.

philjayj · 21 Jan 2008 at 20:24

I have tried finding the make and model of the mobo, but with no luck.

The best I can give you is the PC is a Dell Dimension 3000 with an Pentium 4 3.2GHz CPU. I have put a single 1GB stick of Crucial RAM into the system (PC3200 184-pin).

Fraservet · 21 Jan 2008 at 20:43

possibly go into your bios and see what it says about your ram? - and it probably says the m/b name there somewhere too, or maybe on the boot screen?

philjayj · 21 Jan 2008 at 20:53

I've just gone into the BIOS, and strangely, the BIOS is reporting 1GB of ram installed.

Also, there are no details of the board manufacturer. It just gives the BIOS version of A02.

MumboJumbo · 21 Jan 2008 at 20:58

is this a factory built pc?

philjayj · 21 Jan 2008 at 21:04

Yes, its a dell dimension 3000. Its hard drive crashed and was replaced yesterday.

fester · 21 Jan 2008 at 21:24

It could be windows trying to update it's self in the background that's slowing every thing down.

philjayj · 21 Jan 2008 at 21:27

I'm running the updates now, going to see if that helps.

If not, would you suggest a re-install of the OS? (Win XP Pro).

*Chris · 21 Jan 2008 at 21:32

always a good place to start - id fully format the drive too if i were you, make sure u back everything u wanna keep up first.

philjayj · 21 Jan 2008 at 21:35

The drive which the OS is installed on is a brand new one. It was formatted and partitioned before windows was installed - so I'll see how the updates go.

fester · 21 Jan 2008 at 22:15

Have you tried to do any thing with the old hard drive to see what's wrong with it. Just in case it was a virus or maybe a motherboard or memory problem that made it go down.

philjayj · 21 Jan 2008 at 23:22

I haven't done anything with it. The PC belongs to my two nephews who have had admin rights on the PC for the last 12 months, so theyve practically installed, downloaded and done pretty much what they wanted - and it doesnt help that they never shut it down properly, just cut the power.

fester · 21 Jan 2008 at 23:36

I'd run memtest and try that old hard drive in again to make sure that was the problem and not the motherboard or ram .

philjayj · 22 Jan 2008 at 16:40

Edit: It was the CMOS battery

Thanks for all your suggestions guys, it was very much appreciated.

Thanks

Phil