Bill gates sabotaged my computer. (tech help)

[General Ludd]

My upgrade from Win98 SE to Win XP has not gone too well. Since upgrading, I have had a huge performance hit, particularily (and I think this is the source of the problem) when loading textures. Shadowbane, for example, runs like crap now. Everytime the game loads a new piece of terrain the games stutters, freezes, or even crashes. Even simply selecting a campaign in Medieval Total War - where all it has to load is a simple 2D map and some text - it freezes for about 3 seconds. Everytime this happens, the CPU usage skyrockets to 100% i have left the task monitor run in the background to watch and it always sky rockets every time a new graphic is loaded.

My computer is:

ASUS A7N8X Deluxe
Athlon XP 2400
512MB PC2700 RAM
Radeon 9700 Pro
Sound Blast Audigy

What is the problem? It can't be RAM I have plently of that, and have tried running windows bare-bone. I have also tried unistalling and reinstalling my video drivers countless times.

[OneFootInTheGrave]

Whoaaaa... , not bad PC you have out there

Well the easiest is another install of Win XP, install your games in that instance, and off you go, will be done in 1 hour ... you will still keep the old setup for anything else that you might need for the time being until you migrate fully than you can just uninstall all in the old setup and delete that installation, if there is a need (but I would tend not to think so as you most likely have a 120 GB hdd, and plenty of space)...

so just install win XP as a separate OS once again. (do not choose repair option as in my experience it never worked )

[reds4ever]

while were on the subject (hope you don't mind Os), how can i speed up my start up in WinXP? I've deleted everything from the startup folder. It seems to take ages loading the stuff i need so i can't delete them (ie norton et al)

[alva]

Since upgrading,

Have you,

Updated XP,
updated your drivers?

[alva]

@reds;

What is long for you?

I think it takes around -give or take a sec-, 30 sec to load XP up to the log-in screen on my PC.

[General Ludd]

Originally posted by alva

Since upgrading,

Have you,

Updated XP,
updated your drivers?

I've gotten the service pack and updated all my drivers, yes.

[reds4ever]

alva

XP loads normally (ie 20 secs or so), but getting the 'startup icons' takes another 2 minutes. Is there a file i can look at to see whats happenning? (like autoexec?)

[General Ludd]

How exactly do I install it on a new partition? I recall having the option when installing it the first time... but there is no readily available way of doing it as far as I can see. Just like to know that I'm doing it right before I get an installation going.

[alva]

Do you have many of them on your desktop?
(and try not to open anything while XP is still loading them, it will only makes everything load slower).

Is your HD fragmented heavely? Try fixing that for example.
Another good thing to do is to make a windows only HD partition.

What are your specs btw (they should be good enough if it loads in 20 sec though)

[Whaleboy]

Nice PC, XP should be running ok.

Reinstall, but this time use NTFS

Failing that, or indeed, sodding that, install Linux!

[alva]

Reinstall, but this time use NTFS

Be carefull if you have any winmx -incomplete files- left on your HD that you want to keep (different partition for example).
Twice I had problems with those

[DRoseDARs]

Try checking this:

Start > Control Panel > Add or Remove Programs > Look for "Windows XP Hotfix (SP2) Q811493"

That "update" was discovered to zap system resources. I don't know when Microsoft is going to issue an update for the update, but until such time that "update" is banished from my computer.

As I'm typing this I notice the little f*cker has snuck its way back onto my computer...naughty, naughty.

EDIT:
I checked MS's tech support site today (June 20) and they CLAIM to have fixed the problem and have released a revised version of the update. It is up to the individual to decide whether there's any change.

[Urban Ranger]

The only problem I could think of is your swap file. How much RAM do you have, and what is your virual memory setting?

[General Ludd]

Originally posted by DRoseDARs
Try checking this:

Start > Control Panel > Add or Remove Programs > Look for "Windows XP Hotfix (SP2) Q811493"

That "update" was discovered to zap system resources. I don't know when Microsoft is going to issue an update for the update, but until such time that "update" is banished from my computer.

As I'm typing this I notice the little f*cker has snuck its way back onto my computer...naughty, naughty.

No effect.

The only problem I could think of is your swap file. How much RAM do you have, and what is your virual memory setting?

I have 512MB of PC2700 RAM, as stated above. Virtual memory was set to have windows manage it, but I tried seting it at 2gb min/max in an attempt to solve this but had no luck.

[Richelieu]

Originally posted by DRoseDARs
Try checking this:
Start > Control Panel > Add or Remove Programs > Look for "Windows XP Hotfix (SP2) Q811493"

Just did this on mine and it does improve performance. Thanks DRoseDAR!