PC is so slow, what is causing this?

[Guest_imported]

I built my own P4-1.7 computer and its just as slow or even slower than my old Dell 4100 w/ PIII 866MHz.

Specs of new computer:
P4 1.7GHz
ASUS P4T
256 PC800 Rambus


Granted I have a lot more programs running in background on my new computer(Norton AntiVirus, Task manager/monitor, etc etc but not enough that I have to scroll to see all the programs running when i hit Ctrl-alt-delete). On my old computer i have NOTHING running (just explorer, systray).
Shouldn't my new computer still be faster?

The problem is:
When i open programs on my new computer its either slow or it "stutters"

What in the world is the problem????

 

[jaeddy]

A couple of possibilities. First, what OS are you running?

Next, do you have the latest drivers for your chipset, drive controllers, video, etc?

Did you use the default BIOS settings? Check to make sure both internal and external (L2) processor caches are enabled.

Did you change your pagefile (virtual memory) settings? How is your drive partitioned and how much space is available on your system partition?

Provide more information and somebody here ought to be able to give you more options.

 

[SSJpn]

Both the new and old computers are running winME.

I don't know if I have the latest drivers but I bought the motherboard new so shouldn't it have the latest drivers for chipset?

I use the default BIOS setting for both computers

Virtual memory unchanged for both computers

New computer: 1 partition, 30GB capacity with only 10GB used
Old computer: 1 partition, 15GB capacity with only 4GB used

 

[jaeddy]

Just because the MoBo is new doesn't mean the chipset drivers that came with it are. When I built my new Athlon the dirvers disk was at least 2 major revisions out of date. That's where I would start first. Also, check your BIOs settings to be certain the processor and second level cache are enabled.

 

[ceh4702]

Go to the desktop and right-click on the My-Computer Icon, and select properties Select Performance and make sure you are not in MS-DOS compatablility mode for any of your drives. Last time to fix this I just reinstalled Windows over itself. There may be an easier way to fix it. Could be other things.

ME sometimes doesn't like the migrate and sleep modes to make the computer's hard drive shut down when not in use. If the computer isn't coming on right away, maybe one of the other drives is not being recognized. I had problems with my BIOS settings on my A Drive for a while and it had to be reset up in the BIOS. Even though I had selected to boot from A first, I had to go back in and tell the BIOS what type of A drive I had.

I have ME on 3 different computers. It seems to work just great. ME is pretty much like win 98, SE with just a few changes. ME has almost no drivers and I think it is better to upgrade 98 with ME, than to install it on a clean install. The only problem I had is with the networking; I had to reconfigure some things manually. If you do not like my post feel free to point out your opinion or my errors.

 

[iggystar]

Your MoBo could be set to the wrong speed you might want to check that. If it has the option for Auto-Select I would recommend NOT using that. Set the jumper to the correct speed for your system.

You might not have DMA turned on for your hard drives. This would affect your speed drastically since it would slow down your virtual memeory.

Make sure devices that are bandwidth hogs, like video cards and sound cards, aren't sharing interrupts with other devices. Your video card, at the very least should be on it's own port.

Make sure you have enough ventalation. If you dont have a good enough fan the CPU could be slowing itself down on purpose to avoid overheating. It's not common but if the heat sink isn't seated properly on the CPU that could be a problem.

Make sure your BIOS has the correct hard drive settings(ata/100, ata/66, etc) and isn't using a legacy setting.


I would also recommed getting a software benchmark program and see if you can localize what's slow. Dr. Hardware is a good one and you can probably get it for free from download.com.

I used this program to find my hard drive was slow. Once I found that it was pretty easy for me to find out that DMA wasn't turned off. It's a handy tool.

 

[swayda]

Hi Sarina12. I'd like you to check one thing for me. Open a command prompt window and type
scandisk /f system.dat
and
scandisk /f user.dat
If your return is
"all file(s) are contiguous" it's not the operating system.
However if it reports "specified file(s) are in (#) non-contiguous blocks email me and I'll send you a method for defragmenting them. A regular defrag doesn't touch these files and when they become fragmented I have seen no other factor that can impact the system so severly. Don Swayser
swayser@optonline.net

 

[SSJpn]

swayda - all file(s) are contiguous - thank you very much for your response. I will check up on iggystar's and ceh4702's suggestions after my final.

 

[sonnyjim]

A suggestion.... if the above fails and is very simple.

Get rid of Windows ME. It has a very nasty habit of "not playing nice".

Seriously though , it may be worth formatting the Drive and start again with Win98 or 2000.

 

[byteya]

Check your heatsink, use a decent thermal compound. The new Intel chips will slow down when they are overheating to save the processor from frying. Use a utility (not sure if WinME system properties gives an accurate processor speed) to see what Mhz your processor is runnning at.

 

[SSJpn]

CPU temp is only at 41 degrees, and 46 degrees after i play games.