WinXP SP1 (again) troubles. Work this one out!!

[Epipheny]

A while ago I installed SP1 and had loads of trouble with it (HD Tach CPU utilization going up from 6% to 49%!!). I gave up and rolled back.

Recently I was having troubles with crashes so I decided to try SP1 again to see if it helped. It didn't fix the crashes and the CPU problems returned. This is where things got weird. I have 1GB of RAM (in 2 512MB modules) and decided to test the machine with only 1 module in at a time (to see if the crashes were related to bad RAM). Out of interest I ran HD Tach again and the CPU utilization went down to 8% (not great, but MUCH better than 49%)!!! I am now very confused as I cant work out what the hell is going on!

Any suggestions appreciated as to what is going on with SP1 (actually, SP1a is what I installed),

Simon

P.S. My machine:

Athlon XP 2000+
1GB DDRRAM
60GB IBM harddrive (cant remember model, sorry)
Asus A7V333
GeForce4 Ti4400

 

[EeyoreX]

If removing a stick of RAM did something to improve your score, then I would say the RAM is most likely the problem. Or perhaps the motherboard. If the problem were SP1/a then removing a stick of RAM wouldn't really do much to change your scores.

\Dan

 

[NogginBoink]

Which process was consuming all of the CPU time?

 

[terminalmind]

To test your memory use this Memtest86
Also try checking your Hard drive for errors with the error-checking utility that comes with XP if you haven't already.

 

[Epipheny]

I have used memtest and found that one stick of RAM had one fault on it and is now out of the machine (I was just trying to find out why my machine was crashing and stumbled across the issue I have found).

I am confused as to why removing a stick of RAM reduces the CPU utilization when using HD Tach. I dont understand.

Anyone else?