Could use some help/advice

[Pwolf]

ok first lemme start with what happened a few months ago.

In late May, my computer froze up one night and when i woke up that morning my harddrive was making odd noises.  after that , the computer wouldn't boot so i took it to a shop and they were able to take everything off the drive and ghost it to a new one, the drive was dead.  After installing the new one, a similar problem happened.  My harddrive started makinjg the same noise and the computer froze.  The drive was connected to a onboard ata133 conrtoller along with 2 others.  So i  took everything off the ata133 controller and put the system disk back on the primary ide controller and everything has been fine since.  

Yesterday night my computer started to run really slow and would hang every now and then and just be really sluggish.  so i restarted, but it wouldn't boot.  it would get to right be fore the XP loading screen and then just sit there.  Not to mention just going through the normal bootup process was really slow.

So i unplugged all drives except for my dvd-rw and system drive and it booted up just fine, no probs.  Then i connected them all again and it booted up just fine, but  the system is still sluggish.  So i decided to see how it would run with only 2 harddrives instead of all 3.  and it run a little faster but it's still sluggish, even more so when i'm copying or moving files.  

So this comes to where i need the help.  *censored* is going on?  i think my motherboard is dieing.  


-Scott

[daydreamer110761]

what sort of system do you have?  it sort of sounds like there's not enough oomph to run all three drives - memory upgrade maybe?

[2k dummy]

there's not enough oomph to run all three drives

I would suspect the PSU.

[Pwolf]

specs:

Gigabyte 8PE 667ultra motherboard
P4 2.8ghz
1024mb DDR2100
420w PSU
2x 120gb WD Drives
1x 200gb Maxtor Drive
1x DVD-RW

Windows XP SP1

The computer was running fine until the ata133/raid controller died (i built the computer in early 2002).  after that it just seemed to run not as well, but i could still do everything i need to do.  PSU problem, i don't know.  Voltage seems fine, but that could be the problem.


-Scott

[merlin_2]

run scan for trojans/worms/viruses  and do you have any peer to peer programs like kazza?download advanced system optimizer from systweak.com and maybe freeramxp from majorgeeks .com

[Pwolf]

i'm 99% sure it's not spyware or viruses.  I don't use P2P programs (except for soulseek and Bittorrent) and i always make sure my system is scanned and has the latest definitions.  Plus, i don't see how spyware or a virus could cause this slowdown only when more drives are added.

-Scott

[merlin_2]

when you runs scans do you disable system restore?have you tried this pc with just one hard drive?this may eliminate a power issue or download aida32 diagnostics

[Pwolf]

i always keep system restore turned off, its more of a hassle then a help.  Yes, with just system drive, everything seemed normal, but just adding one more drive makes it run even more sluggish.

-Scott