   Help me fix this computer?
  My xp machine appears to be dying and I have no clue why. First, anecdotal information on what''s been happening ( this is a 2.4ghz intel p4 machine, 3/4gig ram ).Computer was fine until about 2 months ago. Starting 2 months ago streaming audio would begin to skip. This was presumably due to a lack of system resources ( cycles namely ). This was using a media player that took up less than 2% of my system cycles, and with no other relevant progams running. I brushed it off as typical OS deterioration with time. Performance monitoring in the performance manager would occasionally show large spikes coming from system processes such as explorer.System lag became more severe as time passed. Reboots began to take an unusually long time. Computer would churn away at "Welcome" logo in XP boot for 10-20 seconds occasionally, as opposed to the 1-3 seconds previously. Upon loading to the desktop, I would be unable to do anything. I could click on the start menu, ctrl-alt-del, right click on desktop, etc.. but nothing would happen. Then suddenly all the actions would be carried out concurrently after ~20 seconds.  . I assume this is strongly related to whatever the problem is. Eventually the mouse cursor would begin to freeze during usage at completely random times for periods ranging from 0.5 to 5 seconds. My first solution: A fresh format and install is always a good idea when your OS starts to die, so I did. This did not help. The mouse cursor would still freeze, and booting still took forever.. even when there was absolutely nothing on the machine.My second solution: Perhaps it has something to do with my controller card. I remove the controller card which my 2 HD''s were connected to and send them directly to the motherboard, after resetting their jumpers to the appropriate master/slave settings. This did not help. No problems disappear. My third solution: Post on gamedev and hope. Out of curiosity I also ran my system through pcpitstop and both of my HD''s showed a dramatically low uncached thoroughput  . The master/system disk was running at 0.6mb/s and the slave was running (oddly) at 3.2mb/s. Both speeds rediculously slow, especially for the master disk. Further oddities were the fact that the master disk is hugely fragmented, yet it was recently completely formatted. I am currently defragging using diskkeeper. 
  Try updating your Cmos.Do you have OB Sound, if not remove your soundcard and test.Boot in Safe mode and test.Remove all nom essential Hardware and test.Test the drive speeds on another Mobo if possible.How old are your drives?Hit it with a hammer.;  Is your disk in UDMA 100 mode ? Get an utility from the vendor (search their site) and check it out. Check the BIOS settings for the HDD. ;  Installing FreeBSD will fix anything!Anyway, you might want to get some more RAM, 4GiB is far from enough for notepad. ;  Your system freeze thing sounds almost exactly like what I had happen to me because of shitty ADSL modem drivers. Updated them and everything was fine. See if you can remember installing any drivers for anything when your PC started acting up.  ;  do you seriously have 3/4GB ram?;  3/4 GB ram is quite normal, it''s 768 MB you know.I knew someone who had computer problems as well, he couldn''t even install a new windows because the installer froze.  What has happened is that the electricity isn''t too stable in our dorm building, and it had destroyed capacitors of his motherboard (which gave powerup problems) as well as his ram (which explained all the weird crashes and freezes).  So maybe you''ve had a similar problem... ;  AHH!!!  .75GB ram - i thought he meant 3 or 4 GB ram. alles klar...danke sehr! ;  Thanks for the suggestions. Aye, I meant 768megs by 3/4gig ram. My board is physically capped at 2gigs.  Anyhow, I updated the bios/cmos. Its amusing, I upgraded it last less than 5 months ago, but in that time I had fallen behind by 2 revisions already. I pulled out the slower HDD and set the other slow one as the master. Its performing well enough so far. It still has a rediculously slow 3mb/s uncached speed though, and I just can''t explain it. Fortunately western digital is extremely generous when you''re still on warranty, so I was able to have a new HDD sent out to replace the slower one online without even talking to a representative... which was nice. Windows update has me behind by 44 critical updates, so off I go. I wonder if my machine will still be performing decently after the incoming patch flurry. ;  One thing I failed to mention was the annoyance of windows online registration. Since I had apparently used up the allocated number of registrations allowed for my xp disk ( which I found out when I could no longer do online registration automagically after the latest format), I had to call an 800 number to receive an activation code.Its really pretty dumb. I was able to get a reg code by calling the 800 number and then promising that I have only installed XP on one system. Even though its true in this case, if somebody wanted to defraud MS and get more activation codes, it would be trivial to do so -- they don''t even ask for the product key. I really hope they rethink this whole online activation scheme, it only hurts the honest people. 