XP home - LAGGING LIKE CRAZY

[dahwan]

I was playing Star Wars : Jedi Outcast the other day on multiplayer.
I was in the middle of the game when suddenly is freezes. BUT I WAS WRONG
I found out that it was just lagging. BUT DAMN IT WAS LAGGING LIKE CRAZY. The picture updated like once per minute. I turned off the game, but windows was lagging like that too. The mouse was leaping across the screen in big lagging flickers. I got stunned and i turned off the PC.

When i clicked the power button to turn it back no, i got to the "Microsoft WINDOWS XP HOME" Screen, with the litle blue bar that goes forth and back to indicate that windows is loading. THAT BLUE BAR IS LAGGING TOO. It's jumping forth and back like its just updating a few times pr minute. Now everything is lagging, flickering and jumping as i i only had 10MB of fram or a 100MhZ processor.

WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED?

How can my PC suddenly get so friggin screwed up? This is a disaster! I work as a 3D modeller, but now even opening 3D studio max takes like 10 minutes, and i cant even rotate the viewport because of the intense lagging.

This also happened about a week ago, but it got fixed when i reinstalled windows XP. Please dont tell me i have to reinstall it. i have a deadline, and i cant afford the time it takes to reinstall all my programs and so on.

URGENT; and please help

Spoiler:

MY PC:
1.86GHZ dual core centrino processor
2048 MB ram (recently upgraded from 1024)
ATI mobility Radeon X1600 512MB ScreenCard

[Mickey]

type this in the run prompt
chkdsk c: /f
(if it cant do this your drives are locked so let it do it after reboot)
defrag your system after this

full list of commands can be found here
http://www.microsoft.com/resources/d....mspx?mfr=true

[dahwan]

OMFG that's a quick reply O-o

Thanks, i'll try.

[dahwan]

OK i ran chkdsk. When i started the PC after that, i got a messageBox saying (translating from norwegian) "Rebuilt windows after a critical error"

But it is lagging worse than ever right now. It just got worse. Now i am defragging the disk... Anything else i can do?

[Waka]

system properties/hardware/device manger
double-click on any of the hard drive controllers and see if they all say dma (NOT PIO)

W.

[wakadoo]

check task manager to see if somethin is running you dont know about..........

[dahwan]

I cand find "dma" or "pio" in any of the devices :S

I would love a screengrab

Thanks in adv.

[dahwan]

For the last hour and a half the defrag has frozen on 8% "Compressing files"

Is this good?

And i still cant find anything called DMA or PIO :S

Very urgent! I have a deadline for tomorrow :O

[russbeer]

you need better defragging software than whats standard on xp. O&O defrag is highly recommended and fast (stealth mode) also run a few spyware scans to check if IE has lumbered some memory sapping trojan or malware onto your pc, and I would probably run CCleaner (freeware) to clear any crap temp files and fix any registry issues you might have.

Secondly, have you recently attached any usb equipment to the pc? When i had my wireless router dongle plugged in my pc took an eternity to start and run at full speed. Try disconnecting anything using usb that you don't need for now.

Dunno if that'll work but its usually solved my probs in the past.

CCleaner clicky
Ad-Aware clicky
O&O Defrag (old version) clicky

[Waka]

Did you right click on 'My Computer' and select properties? Did you find device manager?

W.

[russbeer]

is he not bothered now? or has he sorted it?

[Mickey]

you need better defragging software than whats standard on xp. O&O defrag is highly recommended and fast (stealth mode) also run a few spyware scans to check if IE has lumbered some memory sapping trojan or malware onto your pc, and I would probably run CCleaner (freeware) to clear any crap temp files and fix any registry issues you might have.

Secondly, have you recently attached any usb equipment to the pc? When i had my wireless router dongle plugged in my pc took an eternity to start and run at full speed. Try disconnecting anything using usb that you don't need for now.

Dunno if that'll work but its usually solved my probs in the past.

CCleaner clicky
Ad-Aware clicky
O&O Defrag (old version) clicky

good advice dude, was my next choice of reply only alternative is to use perfect disk (defrag)
but he has big issues with crap on his system

[dahwan]

I am scanning and deleting with all the specified software you listed. After a run through with CCleaner, i thought it was fixed, but it got bad again.
Right now i am defragmenting, then i will search for spyware.
Thx for help

I'll get back to you with updates

[dahwan]

94% done defragging

Is it a big chance ad-aware will fix it?

[dahwan]

Oh, never mind. It's only analyzing <( -(

Bummer. i hope it's done soon

[dahwan]

69% done defragmenting... Sorry for the nagging, but i have a job deadline by tomorrow. If this doesnt work, i am really screwed...

[dahwan]

I am not sure if the defragmenting was done before the blue screen of death kicked in...
At least, i right clicked disk C, chose "properties" and tools. There i clicked "troubleshoot", and now it's chkdsk'ing pluss that its checking for some kind of errors... By 5 oclock norwegian time today i am suposed to be done with a scene... And i am barely half way

[Welsh Pete]

To be honest mate, and I do this sort of thing all day in the shop, by now I would have given up on the fix and gone straight tot the reinstall of windows. May seem a lot of hassle but at least you are certaiin of fixing all software errors.

You may wish to run a RAM check first.

[blaggard]

What's your percentage of free space on the system partition? Your laptop is not exactly ideal for the kind of work you are doing, mobility cards are great compared to laptop graphics a few years ago but not up to what you are trying. Even with a clean, spacious newly defragged disk it will struggle and quickly degrade.
If you are running with little free space (and even lots of space with with your specs) the disk swapping will slow it down and leave junk all over the place.XP and now Vista are really untidy and the best machine will struggle in time, Pete is right, complete format and reinstall followed by hardware change! Although sinnce you had a recent re-install it might well be hardware, like the ram you put in. DId you format before your recent reinstall? if you didn't you will have to, just installing again on top wont do the job.

Sorry if this message is a bit fragmented!! I keep coming back to it while trying to do a million other things!

[dahwan]

When i reinstalled the PC the last time, i booted the PC from a windows Vista CD. From there i got access to a cmd where i formated disk c:
After that i just installed XP again.
Just a couple of weeks ago i put in another RAM chip with 1024MB.

Should i reinstall the whole PC after i upgrade the RAM?

I have almost 40GB free of 100GB