im lost and need help, this system is a mystery

hello all.

i have a system that had a bad hard drive replaced it and installed vista for the first time. ive had problems ever since and have checked all my connections.

i have eventually replaced the motherboard with a new evga 680i motherboard, i rmad my memory so i have new motherboard new ram, new 8800gt video card. the only thing i have old is my dvd drive , corsair 550 power supply.

im still having some problems, for example if i go to start, all programs, acessories, instead of it instantly showing the programs under acessories they pop or fade in one at a time, as if the system is lagging. occassionally the system will just freeze up, no error code will happen no blue screen just the constant vista busy circle thing for a mouse pointer and nothing will work not even task manager.

today i installed nvidia monitor, to check my temps and that thing only shows me 3/4 of what im used to seeing and i cant even see the tab to open up the temperature panel. (i fixed this reverting back to normal dpi and temps are excellent)

Strange thing is my games work fine, i play coh, bf2, rainbow six, nwn2, all of them without a single problem or crash.

btw i have a brand new clean install on vista on a new hard drive i have no clue what my problem is, my friend has the same system exact with vista and his vista is snappy. and he doesnt get crashes.

my processor is a e6600 about a year and a half old, how can i tell if this needs replaced, i would replace it but im kinda so bummed im stil having problems im about ready to switch to a console for my gaming becuse the money i put into this system and still having problems is crap. i dont want to invest in say a quad core and then still have hte same dam problems.

also nvida monitor shows my disk usage at 100 percent for about the first three minutes after boot up?

please help!

i have 4gb of ram, no idea on pagefile, yes for sp1

i ran the msconfig, nothing extra was on start up, however i sall the event logger has 3000 admin events everything from unable to create restore point to lost lease on ip etc, non of which has ever poped up or notified me of why dont i see these events or hear of them or get pop ups etc.

did memtest no errors, ram does require 2.2 volt which i did set in bios no problem.

Replace IDE or SATA cable

It sounds like some kind of software(vista) mishap. Or your new HDD is messed up.

First thing I would do is run a linux live cd. Just to see that all the hardware is basically in working order. Then foramt the drive and try a clean install of vista again. You could also try a fresh dual install of xp or linux to see if its just a problem with vista. Basically it sounds like either the hdd is faulty or just for some other reason windows is messed up. Can also have windows run chkdsk and see if any errors come up. It is probally either one of those two things I would guess.

0 bad sectors, o bad file records, 60reparse records?

is there some place or way to have windows vista do a complete os file check, ie to repair it self? if thats the problem i dont know how it could brand new disk brand new hard drive brand new sata cable to mb

can anyone recomend good processor tests, good graphic board tests good memtest that doesnt require a floppy. any other tests i could try? i have warranty on every component finding the right one is the ticket

It sounds like a vista compatability problem. Try updating the gfx drivers.
Are you using a usb keyboard, mouse, etc?

When you wrote "memtest", did you mean "memtest86+"? If not, use memtest86+.