Major Issues On A Friends Pc


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Hey everyone,

Well my friend has about a 3 year old eMachine and as of recently he has started to see many issues arise in his PC. We just did an RAM upgrade to 2GB total since that is all his Mobo supports. About 2 days after installing the RAM, his computer began to become extremely slow. It takes forever to boot into Normal and Safe Mode, his mouse lags across the screen when you move it, PC games are unplayable, and when ever you click a program or the Start Menu it will freeze with that.

My first thought was to run several AV scans, so I did and those came up clean. Then I ran a Chkdsk and full defrag and those completed with no problems. Then I booted to a boot CD and checked the memory and the hard drive and I got no errors on both of those.

I am all out of ideas, and if you guys can think of anything my friend would really appreciate it!

Thanks ahead of time for your help!

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Could be the hard drive, is it working hard? any noises?

Software/OS errors? check event veiwer. Obviously no malware or you'd know.

Check the performance monitor, hows the cpu and ram going. Paging? Virtual memory?

Also, check the temps, overheating can slow you down.

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Sounds as if the hard drive might be dying. When I had a hard drive die on me, it got to where it'd take forEVER to load anything. Windows took 10 minutes to start towards the end. I quickly froze the drive (literally, stuck it in a freezer for a few hours), then slaved it to another and backed up all that I could (about eight 150+ MB videos didn't transfer out of 300-400 or so).

Just how long is it taking to load Windows exactly?

You say a games can load but are unplayable so that leads to lean more towards overheating though. Once the game is loaded, it's in Memory so the performance would be more impacted by heat than a failing hard drive. Be sure to check all the temperatures.

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Shut down the PC and unplug it. Clear the CMOS by moving the jumper and/or removing the battery temporarily. Put the jumper back in the previous position and replace the battery. Plug in the PC and start it. Enter the Bios on startup and find the memory settings. Set them to Auto.

Also make sure the memory sticks are compatible with the motherboard and that they match each other.

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I are not getting any HD sounds or errors. I didn't see anything in the event viewer as well.

Checked the Task Manger and didn't notice anything strange there. Ran speedfan and didn't notice any outrageous temps.

Windows will normally get to POST and take about 15 mins there, then it will go to a black screen for about 10 minutes. Then will say welcome to windows for about 5 minutes.

I mean unplayable because it is just so laggy, they take forever to start, and very very laggy to play.

No noticable temps that are looking too high.

I still can't find the memory option in the bios.

One thing just occured now, we took off everything at startup to see if that would increase start up time, and it helped a little. Now though, if we hover the cursor over the task bar we just get an hourglass and can't click anything. Also can't get to the task manager.

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I would start by tapping the F8 key once a second after the POST beep when you first power on until you get an enhanced startup menu. Choose safe mode.

Does it boot to safe mode quickly but not normal mode?

If so we can troubleshoot that by starting with a clean boot and enabling items one at a time.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/310353

If the problem persists in safe mode; I would go with the suggestion of clearing your CMOS settings and reconfiguring your bios. Possibly the settings for the new RAM and old RAM are different and it got all bollixed up trying to change from one to the other and now supports neither well.

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Well we finally got to reinstalling Windows and it is still laging really bad. He decided that I am going to just build him a new computer. I was hoping if you guys could look at the parts, and let me know if it looks good. He can't really go over $600, and with what I haave below, after rebates it is about $600.

Case

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...N82E16811156191

PSU

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...N82E16817152028

Mobo

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...N82E16813128373

CPU

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...N82E16819103300

CPU Heatsink

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...N82E16835185125

RAM

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...N82E16820231226

HDD

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...N82E16822136098

GFX Card

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...N82E16814127359

Optical Drive

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...N82E16827106263

Thanks again!

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