Slow system: am at wit's end.

Hi guys, it's going to take me about 10 minutes to type this, I'm sure. My Win 2000 SP4 is operating at about a 10th of its usual speed. It takes 20 minutes and then hangs when detecting new hardware (ext modem, flash drive) and if I have more than one programme operating at a time it all slows down to a snail's pace.

The problem started when I decided I needed two monitors and, not realising I needed a dual-head video card, purchased a cable with two inputs at one end and plugged this into the existing video card. The install went fine but then the system stopped turning off and rebooted instead of shutting down.

And of course this dual cable simply cloned my existing screen.

I had already been using a Proview 15" LCD monitor and the second monitor is a Philips 15" flat screen. Both are about three years old.

So I realised that I needed a dual head card and installed a Matrox G450. The not-shutting-down was still an issue so I uninstalled the Matrox card and tried to reinstall my original Geforce card, but then the system just hung on "found new hardware ".

So I bit the bullet and took the box to a technician who declared everything was running fine and managed to reinstall the Matrox card. However, when I watched him demonstrate the sytem after he'd "fixed" it, the system was still running very slowly.

Back to square one but still with two screens, both doing what they should, just the whole system running in quicksand mode and unable to install any new hardware.

The only thing I can think of is to reinstall Windows - perhaps WinXP this time.

Thanks in advance for any advice before I tear my hair out.

System specs:
AMD PC Athlon XP, 2066 mhz (12.5 x 165) 2600+ with Win 2000 SP4
1024 meg ram
Partitioned disk: c drive (Win2k): 23 gig with 10 gig free, d drive:90 gig with 70 gig free

Jo

 

If you are in a position to do so and this is a 2K-pro workstation, I'd highly recommend XP-pro with SP2 slipstreamed and do a clean install.

If you take that route, no need for lots of troubleshooting stuff. So let us know.