Bad system slowdown

[synth7]

CPU: AMD Athlon64 3000+ (1.8GHz)
RAM: 2x512 (1GB) Corsair XMS Memory
Video: eVGA GeForce 6800GS 256MB AGP

First of all, on Windows loading (with the XP logo and the moving bar), the bar will go fine for a second, then freeze for like 5 seconds, move a bit, then freeze more. It can take ~2 minutes to get past it. And when I fnally get to my desktop, it takes another ~10 seconds to load the two programs I have set to run on startup. And whenever I try to do anything, I'll hit bad system lag. I have WinBar (a dockable program that lets you monitor RAM, CPU, bandwidth, etc and never given me any problems), and it is always showing random CPU spikes when I'm not doing anything. Things like maximizing and minimizing a Gaim window cause usage to shoot up to around 50% load. Looking at the Processes tab of Task Manager, it shows all kinds of different applications (firefox.exe, taskmgr.exe, mirc.exe, etc) taking up unnatural amounts of CPU (63, 80, etc). System Idle Process hardly ever has the 99 it normal has, and everything in the window keeps jumping around taking up CPU time and load. No spyware, not viruses, no rootkits. Yesterday I got a new nVidia video card and got rid of my ATI card, maybe thats causing something? I used Driver Cleaner Pro to get rid of everything ATI after using the official ATI Uninstaller, but it doesn't seem to have done anything. I really have no idea.

here is a screenshot of my Bootvis after a reboot, scrolled all the way over. I never remember it being like that before. The lcd*.exe entries are small applications that my keyboard (Logitech G15) displays on it's built-in LCD screen (time, winamp song, etc). What's slowing me down? I *did* install a new printer on Sunday (I noticed the spoolsv.exe as I was typing this), maybe that could be slowing down everything, althought I don't see how that could be the problem. Also, my fans seem a bit weird. When I reboot, the main CPU fan (I think it's this one anyways) actually seems to speed up. Or maybe it's my GPU fan, I really can't tell. And this morning I woke up and I could tell my PC was louder than normal.

Please help.

 

[KSoD]

Check your fans make sure they are all working properly. After that do the normal routine. Run AV, Spyware, and Malware scans. See if those come up with anything. After that do Start>Run>msconfig>Startup Tab. Make sure only the items you want to start at boot are checked.

Then reboot and see if anything helped.

 

[jeremy]

from what i can see on that screenshot, write caching on your hd is disabled this lowers its performance and might have something to do with those slowdowns, goto start-->run-->sysdm.cpl-->hardware-->device manager-->disk drives and double click the hard drive goto "policies" tab and tick "enable write caching on the disk" , also i wonder if you have dma enabled. in device manager expand "ide ata/atapi controllers" double click each ide channel and goto "advanced settings" in each and take screenshots

also i recommend scanning on these sites
http://www.kaspersky.com/virusscanner
http://www.ewido.net/en/onlinescan/
http://www.webroot.com/consumer/products/spysweeper/freescan.html

 

[synth7]

jeremy: It would probably help to mention (and I am dumb for not mentioning it before), but my harddrive is SATA, so everything is grayed out in the Policies tab. I don't, however, want to rule out the possibility of a hard drive problem. I noticed just now while trying to defragment that it took a lot longer than normal to Analyze my drive to see if it needed defraging. Even though I don't want to think this, could it be that my hard drive is dying? It's a Maxtor DiamondMax 10 200GB SATA drive, and I've had it a little over a year.

Makaveli213: Ran all the scans I could think of last night, and short of scanning very slowly, they returned nothing. I believe all my fans are working OK. My CPU heatsink and fan seem to be running, the CPU fan is sucking air towards the heatsink. The larger fan in the back of my case is blowing air out of the back, and as far as I can tell (it is on the bottom of the card), my GPU heatsink and fan are doing their thing.

Today while at classes, I decided to (just to rule it out) test my RAM for corruption. I got home and MemTest86++ reported 0 Errors and 20 Passes so it can't be that. My system still has the same symptoms. Windows loading screen takes 1-2 minutes, and the smallest tasks (selecting a bookmark in Firefox) cause the CPU usage to jump quite a bit, as well as a general sluggishness in Windows.

 

[jeremy]

in some bioses there is sata dma settings , you might wanna have a look

 

[synth7]

jeremy: I don't see anything like that. However, this HAS to be an issue here....

Running CPU-Z, I noticed that my Core Clock Speed and HTT fluctuate. The default HTT *should* be 200MHz with a 9x multiplier to get my stock clock speed of 1800MHz, or 1.8GHz. However, every 1-2 seconds my core clock speed will jump from anywhere between 1789Mhz to 1813Mhz, meaning that my HTT will not stay constant. What is this?

 

[jeremy]

i think its an issue some mobos have but im not 100% sure about it , anyway whats your motherboard? tell me and ill grab the manual maybe there is an sata dma settings in the bios after all

 

[synth7]

MSI K8T Neo2-F (model: MS-6702E)