Help!! (Windows XP major issues)

Hey, I'm currently posting from safe mode...

Basically, 2 days ago, I downloaded PerfectDisk defragger and started running it. After a while my system locked up, and upon restart it said the volume was dirty, etc, and chkdsk ran, and everything seemed to be alright. Today, however, my system was running extremely sluggishly. Upon reboot, the windows loading screen was taking FOREVER, with noticeable lag. When the computer finally did reboot, it was also too slow to use. I restarted again, same result. Looking at the task manager upon reboot showed 80-100% usage (I have 2gb RAM, I just installed the RAM about 5 days ago, it was working perfectly). After a few minutes of letting the computer sit, it went down to a much more normal usage.

I figured the problem might've been that the defragger didn't finish, so I ran that again, and after letting that sit for a while, bluescreen'd. Every time I want to start Windows, it takes an incredibly long time, and is very slow, especially at first.

Any ideas?

 

Can you check if your hdd is running in PIO mode?

 

I'm not all that familiar with PIO mode, but I went to the device manager, right clicked on primary IDE channel, and it says:

transfer mode: DMA if available
current transfer mode: PIO mode

 

I appreciate your help, but it's been 4 years since I got the laptop, never formatted, and I think it's time to do that, and also install Windows 7

Thanks again for trying to help.

 

Windows 7 FTW. install it, and you'll never go back

 

Mind if I ask a silly question? If you suspected this particular defragmenter botched your system the first time, why on Earth did you then run it a second time?

Also, you say the system was under heavy use after boot - by what?

Again, notwithstanding your new RAM seems to have been working fine for the last 5 days, it could still be the source of your troubles; have you tried going back to the old memory configuration to see if that changes anything?

Lastly, since the system does sound thoroughly botched (although the cause is not entirely clear at this point), a format and clean reinstallation is probably the quickest and most efficient way to deal with it; however, I would be a little careful about installing Windows 7 on it until you've verified that it actually has the hardware necessary to run Win 7 - since you say the system is 4 years old, that means you got it some time in 2005, which means that you got it at least a year and a half before _Vista was introduced. Since _Vista-capable systems were in short supply even in the Fall of 2006 (_Vista was released in January of 2007), there is no guarantee that your system is capable of running _Vista (you didn't provide any specs, so there's no way to tell) and since Win7 is based off of the same core components that make up _Vista, it is only reasonable to assume that there is no good reason to think that your system is capable of running Win7 until you've actually checked the specs out.

 

Hey, I'm responding from Windows 7, so everything is ok now It wasn't worth the effort to figure out what was wrong with it. Running the defrag again - well, I assumed that the problems might've resulted from the defrag not finishing properly..so if I ran it and it finished, I figured it might work.

 

Nothing like putting the boat in the water to see if it's water-tight. I'm glad your system didn't sink under Win7 (speaking of which, since it's an older system, would you mind posting the specs so others with older systems can get an idea of what older equipment can handle Win 7?).

Since you've got a fresh install of Win7 going, that renders the question about running the defragmenter again somewhat moot, although I would suggest that running it again in those circumstances is probably best avoided (most likely, if you've got corruption in your file system, it's probably a good idea to avoid any defragmenter until you've got the file system back under control - even the built-in defragmenter could make the problem worse rather than better by moving fragments to places they cannot be properly located, or by overwriting fragments that have been "lost" but that could be recovered running something like chkdsk).

 

Sure! And thanks again for your help.

My laptop is almost exactly 4 years old (4 year warrantee expired 2 or 3 days before I started having these problems - go figure).

Intel Pentium M processor, 1.86 GHz

2gb RAM (I bought it with 1gb, installed 2gb a few weeks ago)

nVidia geForce Go 6800

80gb harddrive, not sure how to check the speed

Everything runs smoothly, even Aero

Oh, and this is a Dell Inspiron 9300 (17")