What the **** is up with my computer?

[YOyoYOhowsDAjello]

1800+ XP
ECS K7S5A
40 gig WD 7200 (primary)
80 gig Maxtor 7200 (storage)
512 generic SDR
Geforce3 Ti200
sb live value
98se

Windows used to take about 30 seconds till I got the first background screen. I dont remember doing anything out of the ordinary yesterday, last thing I did was start defragmenting both HDDs and they were done when I got up. I double clicked kazaa lite and turned off my monitor (don't know how fast it loaded) and went to school. I came home today to find kazaa with all files looking for more sources. I figured I needed a restart so I did so, but it took a really long time to do it and my HDD was really cranking.

When it restarted it took over 5 minutes and I was getting worried. Long story short, 5 minutes is a consistent start up time now, all my programs take 10 times longer to start up and I cant even play an mp3 while opening programs or opening web pages without it freezing up or getting really distorted.

I tried booting up to my D drive (98se too) and everything was as fast as it normally should be. I tried playing some mp3s from my regular drive while booted in the storage drive and they played no problem.

So, any advice? Is my hard drive failing or something? If this doesn't clear up I plan to reformat, but I'd prefer not to do so if I didn't have to.

I feel like I'm on a pentium 266 we have at school instead of this 1800+
Thanks ahead of time for the help.

 

[bozo1]

Not running low on disk space on your primary drive are you?

 

[YOyoYOhowsDAjello]

Nope, only half full on primary, and 3/4 on storage. Ram usage is normal too.
Thanks for the thought though

 

[ElDonAntonio]

what defragmenter do you use? you could try and run it again , maybe it screwed up the first time...

is it possible also you got a virus from kazaa? do you have antivirus protection?

 

[YOyoYOhowsDAjello]

I used standard defragmented that comes with windows 98

If there's one that's free and good I would really appreciate it if somebody could give me a link.

I already defragmented it again, no luck.

Norton anti-virus, virus list upgdated just last week.

I'm only downloading movies and tv off kazaa lately, no programs, so don't know if I could have gotten a virus from one of those, they seem pretty legit. Although I did download crouching tiger hidden dragon recently and it didn't have any sound that worked. WMP downloaded a codec for it, but it still didn't work. Divx couldn't play it either. Could I have gotten some sort of virus that way without norton detecting it?

On a brigther note, I'm kinda getting used to this mp3 distortion, this must be what it's like to be high.

 

[YOyoYOhowsDAjello]

Ok, I tried something else, I used kernel processor usage to see how my cpu was doing during these loading tiems, and i got a full screen of 100% usage when I opened word. It also spiked up a long time when closing it. When I opened it again it only took a second like it normally does. Still sounds like a HDD problem to me (once it was cached in ram it worked great).

Maybe I'll try defragmenting one more time (3rd time's a charm???)

 

[ElDonAntonio]

hmmmm this rules the viruses idea out...

Win98's defragmenter should be ok. Did you disable Norton antivirus while defragmenting?

DId you check your virtual memory? if it's static, try putting it dynamic and vice versa, it may be corrupted, but that'll force windows to rebuild it.

Good luck!!

edit: if you decide to reformat, install win2k instead of 98se...I think you'll greatly enjoy the improvement!

 

[YOyoYOhowsDAjello]

I tried messing around with the virtual memory, didn't seem to help at all. I don't even know if I'm using any virtual memory with 512mb and all. I did have norton running when i defragmented, I always turn it off, but now that you mention it I guess I did forget to turn it off. Could this have screwed something up, or will another defragmentation without it on help out?

Thanks a lot for the help by the way.

 

[ElDonAntonio]

Windows always uses virtual memory, whether you have 32 or 512 megs...it's usually recommended to keep it constant (prevent windows from resizing it and playing with it), at about the size of your RAM.

Ususally I can't get a defragmentation complete with Norton antivirus ON because defrag constantly complains of disk activity (norton checking what's happening on the disk). Maybe your disk is fast enough to deal with that. I don't think that it would cause such trouble to keep it on while defragmenting, but you never know...

If you have kazaa lite, you can always try to download Norton Utilities to defragment and analyze the drive. Granted it's illegal, but I don't think anyone would mind if you just check out your drive and uninstall it later or decide to buy it

Glad to help, I've already suffered countless times of such problems and I know how frustrating it is :S
Is your software installation old btw? if it's more than ~1.5 years, it may be a good thing to format and install win2k

 

[YOyoYOhowsDAjello]

I reformated my drive just about 2 months ago. I just made a big order from newegg ($460) and included in my order is my new turtle beach santa cruz. I've heard that it would be a good idea to reformat to get rid of the creative drivers I have from my live now. I'm using my storage HDD as my primary now, and I have it close to what I used to have for my settings.

I sure hope that a reformat will help my 40 out. Luckily all my divx movies are safe . 45 gigs took a looooong time.

 

[Adul]

uninstall a few apps to see what happens.