XP Pro Extremely Slow

[monir]

my new system just recently became extremely slow, i didn't do anything new. i checked the disk it's fine. none of the resource is being eaten up. my system is
EVGA 750i
8800GTS 640
Q6600 @ stock
680W Thermaltake PSU
G.SKill 4GB PC1000 RAM

 

[OldMX]

Slow like hard disks reverted to PIO mode or slow in another way?

 

[monir]

i found the problem, my q6600 is running at 1600 mhz, most likely at 6x multiplier, i didn't oc it or anything and spread spectrum is off and all the thermal throttling is off too.

 

[Joe Average]

Thermal throttling is one thing, and I seriously doubt you're having heat issues as you're not overclocking - the Q6600 is one damned cool running processor even with the stock cooler. 1.6 GHz is the EIST (Enhanced Intel SpeedStep Technology) speed of the Q6600 when it throttles the speed down, and that's perfectly normal operation.

In today's world of dynamic speed throttling PCs, there is realistically no reason to leave a CPU running at max speed constantly as that's a waste of electrical power and other resources (and just creates some more heat for no reason). If and when you need some more "juice" from the processor, it'll throttle up to the Q6600 stock speed of 2.4 GHz and you'll never even notice it.

Now, if you're saying that CPU isn't budging from 1.6 GHz, then yeah, that's a bit of an issue. Disabling any thermal throttling is also a bad idea, just for the record. It's there for a reason and shouldn't be an issue, just as dynamic speed throttling should never be an issue either.

There are a bazillion ways to define "my PC just got slower" so... more info is definitely required at this point as it's not all about clockspeed.

 

[monir]

oh ok, so how do i figure out why is this thing running so damn slow, it taked like 20 minutes to work with it after the windows xp logo thing goes away.

 

[dandragonrage]

run some comprehensive system benchmarks. Especially hard drive benchmarks.

I had a 40GB once that went bad. By bad, I mean it still read data fine, but it took a LONG time to start Windows/programs like you complain of. It benchmarked at like 40KB/s. Then it started making odd noises and died totally.