I have no idea what is causing this problem:
Any time my computer is under somewhat of a heavy task; it LAGS and slows down to a halt. Counter-Strike source cannot be open for more than a minute before the whole system completely seezes up and I have to do a cold shut-off.

As soon as I log in, the windows welcome charm is all choppy as if the computer is calculating pi 1000000 times. Heck, even when someone signs into MSN the MSN charm is all staticy and choppy.

When I play a video; the video audio becomes choppy, video lags, etc.

I cant even move a window around or even my mouse around without it looking like I am getting 15 frames per second on the desktop LoL

And even task-related, how long did it take to transfer 300mb from Hard-Drive 1 to Hard-Drive 2? -- 45 minutes. -- What about Microsoft Office 2007 Preview? -- Just about 40 minutes.

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I figured it was the temprature of my CPU so I dusted it to perfection; I focused all the A/C in my house to just my room (now my room is 9*C), I have all fans in my case-a-blazing; and none of it helped - so it cant be a heating issue. My CPU Temp. is now at a cool 36*C and my mobo at 28*C -- And my CPU is a 550; the ones with the insane heating ordeals.

Then I said it must be my video drivers; I update them to the latest ones and low and behold nothing is fixed. Later on I said it cant be the video drivers because what about the sheer performance and audio issues?

So I said maybe its just the operating system, something is messed -- completely formatted (zero filled the drive, then re partitioned everything, re installed XP, installed SP2) -- dun dun -- No fix, still the same old issues with a fresh install of XP.

Any ideas on what this is? it would be *GREATLY, GREATLY* appericated!

Your cpu seems to be malfunctioning, or maybe your ram had some kind of a problem. So the problem seems to be from hardwares not softwares. Contact your support they will know what to do and if you don't have one call a local technican to help you out. Did you newly installed a new hardware, hard drive, DVD rom, mouse, keyboard...? If so try removing every hardware appart and see if the problem persists. If you have another computer install the ram on it and see if it works or your graphic chip. I don't think that this is caused by an over-heating problem.
Regards.

This post has been edited by Hadi: Jun 17 2006, 06:59 AM

Definitely sounds like a cpu or ram issue. I'd say take them all out, clean them well, and reconnect them perfectly. If that doesn't help, you might be looking at replacement costs, which we all know are no fun.

As a -LAST- resort, you could try reformatting and reinstalling windows, as it could be a software issue.

Problem with re-formatting is you still don't know what actually caused the problem, so taking on Johhnys advice, LAST RESORT re-format but do it in stages and see what software makes a difference to your system.

Once you find the cause you can usually find if there is a patch/update to fix the problem, and stop the system from lagging, checks the programs you have installed since the lag started and work backwards is all i can say. Virus Scan too.

it is most likely hardware problem. Why don't t you try to just take out all your ram except for one (i'm assuming you have multiple rams) and test it to see which one is malfunctioning. Actually, from what you discribed, i think the problem is your harddrive. Try to switch the hdd and reinstall window on the new harddrive to see if it still have the same problem. It might be that you have a bad harddrive and it drags your computer down too.

You could also try running memtest on your ram, leave it on overnight see what happens. Umm, check your BIOS and see if there is some setting in there that might be telling you cpu to run slower, or only use one stick of ram. Check in the windows system prefrences (right click on computer, choose properties) and see if the amount of ram is what you think it is, also check to see if the processor is what you think, again this could be cause by a BIOS thing, I had a 3200+ processor detected as a 2200+ simply because the FSB wasn't set right in the BIOS.

Your problem seems just like a bad hard drive. Scan it for bad sectors if you haven't done so. Try to move your operating system to your other hard drive to make sure. If the physical damage was from over heating the effect should have been gradual decline in performance to extreme cases of being unable to move certain files or play movies/programs. Otherwise hopes its the ram cause CPU damage will be costly.

Try to install Everest (doownload at http://www.majorgeeks.com/download4181.html for the free version).

Here you can view your settings of your computer components.
Check the settings of CPU and memory.

You can even do some speed tests of memory and CPU and compare them with other comps.

Here you can see is something wrong, another possibility is that your hard drive with swap file is nearly full.
So check your harddrive space.

Reflash your BIOS, Boot from a LiveCD distro and see if the problem continues in Linux. Then you'll know if its a hardware problem or a software problem.