Wierd Performance Problem

[Reikoshea]

Okay, i have a system that is about a year old, and it has been dynamite forever. About 4 months ago i got a laptop, and stopped using my desktop system. I recently lost the power cable and for this week i have to use my desktop. The computer boots fine, but it is slower than christmas at new years.

Windows XP Pro
ATI 9800Pro 128 MB (Omega 2.6.42)
512 MB Mushkin RAM
P4 2.8GHz (Prescott Socket 478)
SIS655 NB motherboard

I have never had any problems with this computer, but it feels like it is running under about a 90% load every time i use it.

I had a stick of Kingmax 512 in with the mushkin ram before, and i thought it might have been screwing up because i had 2 different stick in dual channel.

So i moved the kingmax stick over a slot so it would run in single channel. I noticed no change in performance. I took the stick out and still nothing happened.

Then i switched to the kingmax stick alone and for some reason it ran at 166MHz on a 200 MHz system. So now i am back to the 512 stick of mushkin all by itself.

I then thought it might be the processor cooling...hot chips sometimes run the way ive seen it running right now. I put on a Zalman 7000 fan and sink with arctic silver...still no change.

The only things i can think of are the graphics card and the motherboard. I cannot replace either due to limited funds...and when i have the funds i will have gotten my power cable in the mail. Does anyone have any idea what could be happening. If it helps Quake3, CS:S and Half Life 2 do not load either. The updates for HL2/CSS load, but the game never starts.

Anyone have any idea where to start on this?

 

[z-lite]

Perhaps the hard drive is going. Check the Task Manager and see if anything is using up the CPU. If the HD light is always on, it might be a drive going bad, heavily fragmented, or needs a chkdsk on the file system.

 

[Reikoshea]

GOT IT!!! WOOT...two days of work, and i didnt catch something sooo simple.

Okay...if you need drivers for ATI or nVidia update through windows update. HEHE...i got them off ATIs site like 10 times and then i used the omega drivers, but nothing ever worked.

Windows update got me up to OpenGL 2.0 support and now all my stuff runs better. I dunno what was up with the 5.9 catalyst I DLed, but everything is good now.

thanks for the reply