windows so slow it took 8 min to load...

[gordenLidy]

i reloaded my xp system i am running a dell 2400

the computer is so slow i started a virus scan last night at 5 pm at 6am it was still running.  it takes over 8 min to load from the boot. 

i checked out the ide setting is on dma ultra dma... any one have any thoughts....

[patio]

Did you re-install your MBoard, video and all other drivers ? ?

[gordenLidy]

yes i did maybe i should try again...

the computer has 512 megs of ram.  is this enough.??
it is a 2 gig hurts pent 4 and has a 80 geg hard drive...wonder if i need more mem...ram

[patio]

That machine has other issues...although 512 won't be blazingly fast it is more than enough to run XP fine with no problems.

This also would not account for the extremely slow bootup time.

If the virus scan took a long time it could be because it was the first run on a new install but it still sounds slow to me.

How much free space is on that drive ? ?

When's the last time chkdsk and defrag were run ? ?

What prompted the re-install to begin with ? ?

[gordenLidy]

the computer is a friend of mine and it was blue screening.  the used space is 2.90
and the free space is 71.5

gigs.

i will work on the other things you sugjest.  will get back to you when done...thanks for the advice....talk back soon doing defrag now should take around 10-11 hours....

[patio]

You're sure the IDE is at UDMA and not PIO mode ? ?

Check both IDE channels...

[contrex]

the computer is a friend of mine

I don't know if I'd say that about mine...

That PC sounds seriously slow!!!

[michaewlewis]

I assume you did a clean install? with a format and everything? is everything seated right on the motherboard and drives?

[gordenLidy]

when you say clean install what do you mean. in set up it shows the c:\ partition ntfs 776258 mb 74074 free

under that it shows unpartitioned space 8 mg..i used the ntfs partion to install right??

or do i need to make a new partition

[michaewlewis]

To do a clean install, you would boot from the windows xp cd and format (erase) the hard drive.

[gordenLidy]

ok did a clean install in process of loading all the driers and software now.  still seems very slow to me i have not put on av stuff yet. 

will do that last.  I think this computer is dead time to put it on a train track and watch it go by by

[GX1_Man]

Remind me why you reinstalled Windows in the first place.

[gordenLidy]

is it posible to put windows 98 2nd ed over xp if i do an fdisk....

the computer is a dell 2400?