New System Lockups

[chicsdiggit]

I've got two new computers built by Harddrive.com. The systems boast:

P4 3.2 Ghz
Gigabyte GA-AKNXP MOBO
1 Gig 400 Mhz Corsair XMS memory
Antec True Power Supply
Two Wester Digital Serial ATA Raptors in Raid 0
One 180 GXP IDE hard Drive
Plextor Plexwriter Premium
Samsung DVD ROM
Sony DRU-510
Windows XP Pro w/ Service Pack 1
ATI Radeon 9600 Pro

Oddly enough, these computers are being brought to their knees under normal windows operation! After a short amount of time, programs stop responding, and even explorer.exe quit responding. The systems are very new, and only a few apps have been installed on the computer, such as ZoneAlarm and Spybot, and ebatesmoneymaker, Microsoft Publisher, Microsoft Office 95, and ArcExplorer. I have run mtist.exe (memory tester) to see if the problem lay in the memory modules. Nothing there. Please help with some ideas as to what's causing these systems to slow to a snails pace!

 

[LordOfAll]

hit ctrl-alt-del and run the task manager, hit the processes tab and see if any programs are hogging cpu cycles. also check the performance tab. if memory available keeps going down over time 1 of the programs you are running has a memory hole.

 

[lobadobadingdong]

MS Office95/97 don't get along well with Windows 2000 or Windows XP, could be your problem.

 

[chicsdiggit]

One of the computers is running office 97, and another is running office 2000. They are both experiencing lockups still. I checked ctrl alt delete and only system idle process is displaying cpu cycles, and about 700 MB of my memory is still available. Do you guys know of anything else? Could it just have been a bad installation of the OS?