Frustrating Slowdown with Fresh XP Install

[Vocalpoint]

All,

New to the forums and I am excited to be a part of the community. Recently, I thought it might be time to rearrange some hardware and clean up an 8 month old install of Windows XP MCE 2005 that I have installed on what I will call my "business" computer.

It's a custom built box with an ASUS P4B533-V motherboard, Intel P4 2.53GHZ chip and a GB of RAM. All the hard disks (3) are Western Digital. I also have an ASUS Geforce 6600 display adapter, a Happauge TV tuner card and a Promise ATA133 IDE adapter card onboard. I use this box for everything from watching DVD's to programming. The initial install of MCE 2005 went very smooth and I was generally very happy with the responsiveness of the machine following the install.

For this new build, I wanted to re-install MCE 2005 on the first 20GB of a 3 year old WD 60GB hard disk. My usual install order is as follows:

Install Win XP MCE 2005 (It has SP2 integrated) to fresh formatted 20GB partition.

Install NIC drivers for the onboard Intel Pro 1000SE interface

Run Windows Update and install all non-driver Windows Updates.

Install drivers for Promise ATA133 card

Install latest NVidia drivers for the Geforce 6600

Install my driver for my Samsung LCD flat panel.

Install driver for the TV tuner card

Install Intellpoint 5.3 (for my new Wireless Optical Mouse 2.0)

Install Intellitype 5.3 for my Windows Comfort Keyboard

Install drivers for HP LaserJet 1000

Problem - As soon as that install was complete - with no apps or anything else installed yet, I noticed XP immediately started to feel pokey and bloated. My boot times, which were usually stellar now feel like minutes...I have installed Windows literally hundreds of times over the years dating back to Win 3.1 and I just cannot understand what the deal is. As I started to add my apps into the mix (just usual stuff like Office, Photoshop, etc etc) things starting to drag down even more.

So I thought - maybe I need a newer, better disk - so I reinstalled again - this time onto a new Seagate 7200.7 120GB IDE drive (which worked excellent in another box I have on the network). But the same thing....it almost felt yet slower in some strange way. Almost like I am installing something in the wrong order - or adding something into the mix that I shouldn't be.

So - Is there something I did in the wrong order? Is there some new Windows Update item that wasn't around in Jan 2005 that is causing this? Has anyone heard the Windows Genuine Advantage tool causing any problems? Do you guys and gals install the latest Intel Chipset software when re-installing or do you ignore it altogether?

For fun last night - I whipped the MCE install drive right out of the box and re-installed Win XP PRO SP1a onto the Seagate and the performance seemed to improve. It was much more snappy than my MCE install.

Any tips or insights would be appreciated.

Cheers,

VP

[coconut]

what does task manager show under performance tab? also look at processes list - any particular one eating cpu time?

[Vocalpoint]

Nothing special going on under Task Manager. Just feels bloated. I would love to discover one or more processes stealing CPU time and flush em out. Thought maybe it might be the new wireless keyboard and mouse...I dunno - pulling at straws.

It's just strange that I can go into my day gig and sit down at some salesmans desk who is running a 1.8GHZ P4 with 512MB of ram and some crappy 20GB 5 year old drive and a 16 MB video card and his machine seems snappier than all hell.

I will keep at this until I find out what is going on.

Cheers!

VP

[MHz]

Do you guys and gals install the latest Intel Chipset software when re-installing or do you ignore it altogether?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Do not need to if XP has the drivers for your chipset. But I would be inclined to install the latest chipset drivers in your circumstance. It may solve the issue.

[Vocalpoint]

Update....

After about 6 installs with mixed results...I finally pulled out an 3 year old 40GB Maxtor drive with a 2MB cache and did a fresh Win XP SP2 install followed by the Sept 2005 release of AutoPatcher and my machine is flying again.

No strange slowdowns or anything.

I really don't get it. But all is well. I am sticking with this drive for a while now

Cheers!

VP