[Help] - Install problems

[darcthearcane]

I just recently purchased a new system, after installing everything went to install windows.

The non-gui part seems to go smoothly, am able to format in ntfs using a bootable xp cd, however the GUI portion of the setup took 2+ hours. Got thru that and got to desktop and everything is slow, 5+ second response when I right click desktop, I pull up task mngr to check cpu usage and not doing anything its at about 25-27%. I start moving the mouse around the screen and it jumps to 71%. I tried installing drivers for the mobo and vid cards, still nothing. So I swap out the HDD with a known good one from my old PC and have the same probs. I even tried using a known good CD-ROM drive and installing it a 3rd time. It's not currently connected to my network so no nasties could've gotten in. Really not sure what I'm doing wrong, the OS cd worked fine on another PC. ALso have tried installing without the 2nd vid card. Do I "need" the 64 bit version of xp to for this to work right?

Hardware is as follows

specs are:

Mobo: ASUS A8N-SLI

CPU: AMD Athlon 64 3200+ Venice 1GHz FSB Socket 939

Video cards: 2 PROLINK PV-N43ET(256KD) Geforce 6600 256MB DDR PCI Express x16 Video Card

RAM: CORSAIR ValueSelect 1GB 184-Pin DDR SDRAM DDR 400 (PC 3200)

HDD: Western Digital Caviar SE WD800JB 80GB 7200 RPM IDE Ultra ATA100 Hard Drive.(also tried 40gb seagate drive, currently attached via IDE)

Dvd ROM: LITE-ON Black IDE Combo Drive

PSU: 450w generic psu(which i plan to upgrade btw)

Title Edited - Please follow new posting rules from now on.

--Zxian

Edited December 19, 2005 by Zxian

[suryad]

That is quite interesting. The only thing I can think of right now is that there could be something wrong with that XP cd of yours. Is it a legal copy? Or is it a copied copy? Or did you nLite it?

[darcthearcane]

Cd is a copy of origional, the orig is unusable. however this exact cd worked fine on another rig I had a month ago.

[suryad]

Ok. Hmm...never faced this problem myself. Ok have you installed the mobo drivers after install?

[anoxan]

maybe something is b0rked hardware-wise..

have you tried reinstalling everything on your board (ram, cpu)? I believe this happened to me once when I was playing around with my cpu and didn't put it back in just right...

[darcthearcane]

Yep drivers installed, tried re-seating cpu/ram/vga no change.

[LLXX]

Try killing off a few processes and disabling a few services, see if that helps.

Is there excessive hard disk activity?

[anoxan]

could just be some rogue process as LLXX said...

if it's a process then I would think that the slowness would go away if you booted in safe mode..

don't suppose you have another os to put on it and see if it does the same thing? if it did the same thing with a different os, I'd start looking at the mb...

but, I'm out of ideas..

gl

[darcthearcane]

I could try installing a copy on mandrake linux I have but I am pretty linux illiterate. Same slowness in safe mode.

[MCT]

u could download a trial copy of windows (xp, 2003) to see if that works

[Zxian]

Try killing off a few processes and disabling a few services, see if that helps.

Is there excessive hard disk activity?

Why do people recommend this to all problems? Killing random services without knowing what you're doing is bad. "DHCP Client... I dunno what it is... but I should disable it because someone told me too" - wham... no more internet, and no idea why. Same goes for processes.

A normal XP install shouldn't need this, so it's not a good solution to the problem.

I could try installing a copy on mandrake linux I have but I am pretty linux illiterate. Same slowness in safe mode.

This would probably be a good idea. I'd try installing a Linux distro (Ubuntu or Suse are my recommendations) and seeing if you get the same type of problems. Both are relatively easy to find your way around, and have fairly good basic hardware support. If your problem shows up in two completely different operating systems, then you know it's hardware-based.

If that doesn't solve your problems, disconnect everything from your computer and reseat everything. Try connecting only the essentials and reinstalling (mobo, CPU, 1 stick of RAM, 1 HD, 1 optical drive, vid card if not onboard - nothing more). If the problem goes away here, then you've isolated your problem to one of the removed components.

[cluberti]

Is the system running antivirus software? I'm not asking because I think you have a virus, but because it's possible it's the A/V filter driver that's causing the issue - does uninstalling the A/V fix anything?

Also, does this happen in safe mode?

[qpshelp]

It sounds to me like there is something wrong with your hard drive...If it took 2 hours to install, and everything seems to be working fine, your hard drive might be getting ready to go bad. Pay attention to the sounds it makes when you turn the system on, and when its accessing data. If it seems loud to you, it might be going bad....Also, you may have something configured in your bios thats causing it to crawl like that...although this is not likely, i would try restoring your defaults if you've made any changes (ie. overclock memory, ect)