Constant Window Hanging/Glitching :(

cal9745

Member
Sep 10, 2006
28
0
0
My specs are:

250gb sata hard drive
2gb corsair memory pc6400
asus p5w dh delux
core 2 duo e6600 @ stock
ati 1900xt 256mb
Creative x-fi sound card


Whenever I do certain things, such as "unlock" the windows taskbar, the taskbar and a few other things such as windows media player freeze for over 2 minutes. Also, when I shut down my computer, it takes about 30 seconds to actually shut down, and many times 3 or more programs must be ended manually to finish the shutdown.

It starts slower than my friends computer, who has 1gb of ddr pc2700 ram and a p4 Celeron @ less than 1.5ghz, starts about 40 seconds faster than mine (mine takes 1 minute and 45 seconds to restart last time I actually checked.)

Sometimes, when my computer has been on for a long time, and I open something such as My Documents, the window looks slightly different, and is missing all of the windows options on the left hand side. I can't click the icons but i can close the window, and i have to restart to fix the problem.

I've googled a few things that helped speed up the computer, but not fix the few annoying glitches.

Thanks,

Cal.
 

MrChad

Lifer
Aug 22, 2001
13,507
3
81
A couple of questions for you:

1. Are you overclocking?
2. Do you have all the latest Windows updates installed?
3. Do you have all the latest WHQL-certified drivers installed for your:
a. Video card?
b. Motherboard chipset?
c. Sound card?
 

cal9745

Member
Sep 10, 2006
28
0
0
1. No, although i had to change a few things in my bios to get my ram running at pc6400 and the right timings.
2. Yes
3. a) yes
b) yes
c) yes

 

MrChad

Lifer
Aug 22, 2001
13,507
3
81
Download the ISO image from http://www.memtest86.com/ and burn the software onto a CD. Boot with said CD and let it run for several passes, preferably overnight. You should not receive any errors at all. If you do, there's likely a problem with your RAM.
 

cal9745

Member
Sep 10, 2006
28
0
0
no errors after about 8 hours, so thats not the issue I'm guessing. I also forgot mention that many programs fail to install, such as adobe acrobat and photoshop. Photoshop installs, but it is completely unusable, glitchy, and crashes in 10 seconds.
 

xtknight

Elite Member
Oct 15, 2004
12,974
0
71
Probably a dual core time synchronization issue.

May need to use /usepmtimer on your boot.ini line, or download a dual-core fix. Though I have no issues with my C2D on XP SP2 stock. Are you using the latest motherboard BIOS? This can fix things like broken IRQ routings that would cause driver problems and freezes, and may fix some timing issues by enabling an alternate timer called "HPET". This is used instead of the time stamp counter (TSC) on both of your CPU cores. The TSCs can get desync'd and cause issues.

Look here for some useful tips: http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=983781