Big problems with my OS

[slubbermand]

Hey guys!

Ok so a week ago I wanted to install win7 on my XP laptop after I'd formatted the C: drive, but the win7 CD was faulty, so I had to stop mid-install and reinstall my XP again.

A number of troubles occurred afterwards (driver malfunctions/overrides and such), and I thought the best thing to do was to format my C: drive to get rid of any remnant win7 bits, and then install XP again.

This I did, and the whole thing was running fairly smooth until the day after where it simply did not recognize my C: drive (and thereby my OS install), which meant I had to bring out my XP disc again...

When I went through the OS install progress, the computer did not recognize my C: partition, and it was not even in NTFS format!

Now I have XP fully installed with SP3 and .NET4 etc again, and after hours/a day, it started giving me all kinds of headaches:

Extremely slow boot times (right after OS install it was like 1.5 minutes, now its more like ten minutes...), slow and unresponsive OS when I finally reach the desktop, freezing in common tasks like word, audio dropouts on my external usb soundcard (its basically unusable in this state), cyclic redundancy errors, when moving certain files and documents.

I've tried to optimize by eliminating startup services and processes, but no improvement. I've tried to run a short drive self test in SeaTools, but no usable results. I have scanned my entire comp with AVG to see if malware was the sinner, but no results..

My question is if anyone has any idea what this could be? Is it malware? Are my harddrive failing? What can I do more to gain knowledge of the situation?

In a long time I had a faulty power adapter and battery, which meant that the laptop would experience power failure and shut down rather frequently. Can this have had an effect on system stability?

I've tried to give as much info I can, but please ask if you need to know more to help!

Thanks in advance!

Specs:
WinXP Home ed. (SP3)
DirectX 9.0c

Intel Core Duo T8300 @2.4GHz
NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT (512mb)
4Gb RAM
Momentus Laptop HDD (250Gb split in C (programs+OS) and D (data))

Tl;Dr: Installed XP -worked fine -now it doesn't for no apparent reason...

p.s. I will be out of town this weekend, so I will not be able to respond to any fixes before sunday!

 

[pedropt]

I am gonna give a tip to you try .
Get a msdos 6.22 boot cd / usb , run it at bios start .
after getting in DOS mode write (fdisk)
eliminate all partitions from that disk (all data will be lost) .
after that , create a primary partition with half of hard disk size (where you going to install xp again) .
restart computer
Install windows xp from cd , and format in windows setup using NTFS file system .
Then let us know how it works .

 

[slubbermand]

Thanks for your answer! Since I did not have the opportunity to get hold of a msdos boot cd, I did a complete reboot of my system by using the XP repair-mode (erased all partitions and re-formatted the whole harddrive) and installed XP again.

So far I have had no problems.

It seems, after investigating a bit, that a lot of people have problems with AVG hogging the system memory hard, so I've installed Avira instead and I fear that this was the solution.. Could have spared me a lot of time if I had just tried to uninstall it in the first place

Oh well. My system is now "shiny new" so that counts for something I guess..

Still not shure about my external soundcard, but I will try to get to it tomorrow and come back with a result!

cheers!

 

[hang-the-9]

I'd replace the hard-drive, or at least make sure you don't have anything stored on there you can't lose.

 

[slubbermand]

Okay so I'm almost positively sure that AVG is to blame for the slow system I experienced pre-reboot.. Everything is running smooth now.

Everyone that has a mediocre PC or laptop should steer clear of AVG. Use something like mbam or avira instead if you want a system you can actually use!

cheers!