PCTech Forums

For the past few weeks, my HD has been acting funny. Or rather Windows is acting funny with my hard drive.
The problem is that everything is slow with it IN WINDOWS.
when windows is loading, however, the progress bar can barely make two trips across before i see the desktop. But when windows fully loads, every program runs soooo sllloowww. I just bought a new beefed up IDE cable that supports ATA133.

Pentium 4 2.66GHz
80 GB 7200RPM Western Digital HD with 8MB cache
512MB PC2700 RAM

Here's a picture of my SiSoft Sandra Performance Wizard results to prove my problem.
http://www.geocities.com/allenmn85/index.htm

You didn’t mention anything about Anti-Virus software or Spy-Ware removal software.

The first thing that I would recommend would to run an updated virus scan.

There are many free on-line virus scanners available or both offer this service.

I would also recommend for Spy-Ware removal.

well, i already have mcafee virus scan 2004 completely updated, and i have been using spybot for months now....

im thinking it has something to do with my windows, possibly. You see, i lost my windows CD awhile back and had to reinstall. So my friend gave me a 'not-so-legal" copy. I figured since i bought the program legit, it would be OK to use his copy. But this version doesnt seem to run right. It's hard to put my finger on it. For one, i cannot update windows at all. I get some kind of generic error. For two, the internet explorer built into this version of windows doesnt show certain websites. I know it is IE because i downloaded Mozilla and i am using that now.

I suppose to answer to this would be to install a new windows, but that brings two questions into my head....
1) do i have to completey format or can i just install over my current version
2) How do i get a real working version?

PS. if it helps at all, i ran more diagnostic tests and found out my read and write speeds are 10.2 MB/s !!!!!