computer very slow

I recently booted up my semi-old maybe 4 year old computer, it took forever to boot up. I brought out the windows ME cd that came with it, and deleted the old partition then formated a new one. as i write this message windows ME is still installing and its been 6 hours......

What im getting at is that this computer use to be very fast, i use to edit videos with it and never had slowdowns with it. If i deleted everything on the drive, and "DBAN" it, would it make everything faster, or would it take just as long to reinstall windows again.

Edit: sorry i typed in that title trying to hurry up and was planning on changing it before i posted this. Sorry for the bad title.

Given the age of your rig, I'd start to suspect a hardware problem, meaning that some component in your system is either crapping out, or on the verge of doing so. Try doing a diagnostic for your HD; if you have more than 1 stick of RAM, try variety applications, and for sure, get away from ME.

/\Basically everything he said. Run some CD rom checking tools to see if it's going bad which could cause that, then some ram test (memtest) then an HDD test tool like the one from WesterDigital. Mainly though go start a fire and stick the ME disk in it.

I would love to get rid of windows ME, i even tried before. Windows ME is what came with my computer (dell) and because we complained so much they sent us an upgrade to windows XP pro for free.

The problem with the windows XP is that i put it in and it copys setup files, boots up, "windows is entering setup....." then my monitor connection dies and i cant do anything from there.

Sounds like your computer has issues. I had a dell that kept crapping out like that, and sometimes it wouldnt detect the hd. I finally figured out that the case, which was a clamshell design, cracked the ribbon cable after repeated opening/closing it. So even basic things could be the culprit. I would still suspect the hd, mb, or memory though.

If its been sitting for a long time check the capacitors on the Vcore filtering. electrolytic caps tend to dry out when they arent used for a while. Sometimes running the machine will reform the caps and you will see performance increase, however if the caps are too far gone they will degrade in quality more and soon you will get crashes and BSOD, and finnaly a cap blow out wich could lead to frying the mobo and or CPU.

By the way what Chip do you have in there? What speed is it running at. It is also possible that you are so used to the ultra fast machines that this one only seems slow even though its not. My 500Mhz AMD-k6 was ultra fast durring its time. Probably one of the fastest. I was amazed at its speed. Now adays, still runing 98SE, with double the ram, new hard drive and a new CPU (burn the last one out OCing it) the machine still seems sluggish, however I know that its not any slower than when we first got it. Just because we are used to our faster machines is all.

its got a P4 running at 1.3 Ghz

and 128 megs of some super expensive memory that costs 200 bucks for 256 megs.

ganon006 said:

and 128 megs of some super expensive memory that costs 200 bucks for 256 megs.

Click to expand...

Sounds like RAMBUS memory to me.
XP would run like a three legged dog on 128mb of memory if at all, now worth the effort.

2k would be the way to on that computer, though sounds like you lack the disk. XP would run as I did it myself on a 833Mhz 128mb system for about a year. Works ok though it really helps if you turn off things like Themes. As for XP not installing thats very wierd, kind of sounds like it's for some reason almost trying to take over control and dosn't have the proper driver for it. Anyway you could try another video card, like borrow one from a friend or take your PC there and just try to use it during windows install?

I agree with unseen menace. May be a 2 legged dog. XP just flops along on 512 megs. Most people I know start off with 1 gig.

tenchi86, you had it right on. i borrowed a PCI video card from my friend and i got the AGP card running now, new problem though.

When i go to update windows, it "checks to see my current updates" (the webpage with the green bar that just keeps going) and hangs there. Its been 2 hours and it still on that page. Is there an offline updater i can use.

side note: Right now my friends running xp on a 497 Mhz P2 with 128 megs of ram, and it runs perfectly fine.

As is the way of computers, fix one thing and another breaks. Anyway I believe I had this error before though never really messed with trying to fix it. For me all I had to do was turn on the option to Scan for new updates but do not install without my permission. (Not using Windows so it probably says something different then that but should be close enough) It would be in the security center options if you have SP2. If you don't have SP2 you can use the administrator download option and download it and install it based on the .exe, which may fix your problem. This site may be some help you also: http://www.mcse.ms/archive292-2005-6-1655735.html

If you need info on how to manually download SP2 just ask.