P5B, I am having the slow down problem with the following configuration:
ASUS P5B Deluxe with 711 Bios (I updated just to see if my problems are solved, none were solved)
Intel Core 2 DUO E6300 @ 1.86 Ghz
Kingston Value Ram 2 x 256MB DDR2 533 Mhz
Western Digital 250GB Sata-II Harddisk running on Sata-0
XFX Nvidia GeForce 6200 with 128MB - 256MB
That's all needed I think. I got this system up and running when I received the Motherboard on 28th September. Everything worked fine. It booted on the first run. I did fresh install of Windows XP Pro SP2 + All required Drivers + Updates...Things were going fine when I noticed on a restart, that double clicking a folder, and getting into a folder was taking lots of time. I traced back the problem to the Audio driver, then strange enough when I disabled the Windows sound scheme everything worked perfectly.
I started installing the softwares which come on ASUS CD and in the Seperate Media Launcher CD & there my problems started. After installing the Media software by InterVideo which comes bundled with the motherboard on a seperate CD, installing it then reboot and it took hell lot of time for booting, it would further take a long time when Windows welcome screen appeared. It would say "Logging in to Windows" and then there would be no hard disk activity for 10-15 seconds. After that things would go normal and I would see the desktop but even then I felt a little jammed and lagging sort of response from Windows. I was really annoying with it so I just formatted the whole Windows and did a clean install again with all the required drivers and latest updates, also disable the Windows sound scheme so I don't have that problem. I downloaded latest drivers for everything from ASUS website too.
This time, when I installed ZoneAlarmPro. Things went crappy again!!! I suspect the same happens when I install Speedfan even.
Please tell me what this problem is. I really hope it's not related to motherboard fault because in our country, they don't have RETURN policies like the rest of you guys get in your countries

. They won't take it back with the current problem I am facing...Even if they get it for a replacement in Warranty, it will take months before I get another one.
I tried disabling Onboard Sound Device from BIOS, also disabled the Jmicron controller since I read in a few places about it getting things bad too but no luck. I will clear CMOS tomorrow morning to see how things go and also check the RAM modules seperately and in different dual channel slots but I doubt that it has got any thing to do with the RAM. I mean everything is working fine, then all of a sudden after installation of a selected few very needed softwares I get that strange problems.
*sigh*
Please help!