My Computer Seems To Be Running Slowly, Please Help Me?

Saturday, January 30th, 2010 at 10:46 am

I recently built my own computer and it seems to be running slower than my old 7 year old dell computer.
During everyday, low power tasks like web surfing or word documents, I really can’t tell the difference between my new and old computers. When I tested how well it runs with some high def 1080 x264 mkv movies I have around, it worked really well. I noticed during file copying and extracting compressed files the new computer didn’t do the tasks faster than the old computer did, I expected with the new i7 920 64 bit CPU it should be done in 1/10th the time. All the hardware I installed on the new computer are all faster than on the old computer, so at least the access/read speed would be faster, but it wasn’t.
Then came my test of running Half Life 2 to see any improvements and finally experience the game with graphics maxed out. The graphics card handled the graphics part really well, as expected, but the loading (starting HL2) was slower than the old computer, by about 10 minutes!
There is also a problem with the keyboard I have, Its a Logitech illuminated keyboard an even though it HID and Plug-n-play compatible, the keyboard doesn’t work until windows is loaded, and when the computer is turned on with the keyboard plugged to the USB port the computer takes about 3 minutes before the Bios/post screen shows up. When I tried plugging the keyboard into the PS/2 port (with adapter) the bios/post screen shows up immediately but the keyboard doesn’t work at all. I can’t figure that problem out either.
computer specs:
Custom project:
MSI Platinum X58 motherboard
Intel i7 920 quad core processor with HT (some programs think the computer has 8 CPUs and windows sees it as one cpu with 4 cores)
Windows Vista Home Premium 64 bit (I’m not all that familiar with vista- that could be a problem)
Seagate Barracuda 1.5TB SATA II hard drive
nVidia GeForce 250 GTS 512MB graphics
G-Skill 6GB DDR3 1333 ram
onboard 2x Gigabit NIC
onboard Realtec audio with HD capability
22x DVD-ram drive (reads every format of CD and single-layer DVD)
other things I noticed:
the CPU usage never gets above 5% at any time, even when gaming or watch HD movies, normally this would be at 100% on the old computer
the computer uses around 1.5GB ram at all times, it seems pretty high when compared to other computers I use at work also with the Vista OS.
please help me, thank you

Category: Audio Surf

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5 Responses to “My Computer Seems To Be Running Slowly, Please Help Me?”

  1. HardW Says:
    January 30th, 2010 at 1:52 pm

    Pc registry Errors cause pc slow down or pc errors.
    Clean your Registry can make your computer fasterhttp://clean-computer-registry.com/

  2. DaveF195 Says:
    January 30th, 2010 at 5:01 pm

    Just a thought. Are you running IE? If so, bring up Task Manager and see who is taking all of your memory. I have found IE not letting go of memory when going from program to program ( especially EBay ). I hope this helps you because I would really hate to have thrown all that hardware at a 486 class PC.

  3. nolanbow Says:
    January 30th, 2010 at 9:01 pm

    One of my favorites – http://www.ccleaner.com/

  4. Jerome Says:
    January 30th, 2010 at 10:53 pm

    try downoading avg free and adware run them and the keyboard thing is because the drivers dont load up until windows does

  5. wyse_tec Says:
    January 31st, 2010 at 3:24 am

    Well……You are going to have to start at the beginning. I have questions that would need answers so i will just explain what i would do in your situation.
    Install the motherboard drivers from the CD that came with it and set everything to default values to start.
    Make sure the USB legacy Device is turned on in the bios as this may help your keyboard problems. You might need a corded PS2 keyboard to accomplish this.
    Check for the latest drivers for all of your hardware including any bios updates available. Install these updates.
    Make sure that Vista SP-1 is installed as well as any other updates.
    Check to make sure the memory you have installed is in fact the correct memory for your motherboard.
    Defrag your hard drive and remove any useless junk that might have accumulated.
    If all is still not well i would contact MSI support and start asking questions there.
    I’m not a fan of MSI anyway. A problem I had with a motherboard left a bad taste in my mouth. I won’t use anything but Asus or Intel..