I built a new PC a couple of months ago, and I have notice two recurring problems that I can't pin down. Perhaps they are related, perhaps not.
First the computer:
E8400, EVGA 780i, 4GB RAM, EVGA GTX 260, 2 Seagate 250 GB hard drives in RAID 0.
I have the latest bios installed (2.053.E6) and drivers for the motherboard (nForce 15.23). The graphics card is using 181.22. It runs Vista x64.
The problem is the computer runs a little slow. For example, when opening a program like firefox, it takes about 1 full second for the program to start. Although that is not a long time, it is noticeably slower then my other desktop, which sports a Athlon 5200+ (Windsor) also running Vista x64. Other examples of its sluggishness would be clicking the start button, opening windows like control panel or my computer, putting the computer to sleep, everything. To be clear, it is not really slow; it is just not as fast as it should be.
Benchmarks, however, show the new E8400 computer smokes the older Athlon one. Games also run much faster, but that isn't much of an indicator as the graphics cards are very different between the two computers.
As for the other problem, which may or may not be related, periodically my monitor loses the signal from my computer, and it can only be fixed by restarting. The Windows Problem Report classifies these events as video hardware errors. This problem only occurs when my computer was overclocked. I had my FSB running at 444 mhz (CPU at 4 ghz). The ram was not overclocked. Orthos and Prime95 showed no errors after a couple of 12 hour testing sessions. Since returning the computer to stock speeds, I have not experienced this video error. However, it has only been a couple of weeks, and it simply may not have occurred yet.
Other software wise, I don't install any crap on my computer, so I doubt it is spyware based. Plus this has been going on since the computer was first built. I have gone through the running services and weeded everything out; crap running in the background doesn't seem to be the source of the problem.
I would rather not reinstall windows, if possible. Any ideas of what could be going on?
First the computer:
E8400, EVGA 780i, 4GB RAM, EVGA GTX 260, 2 Seagate 250 GB hard drives in RAID 0.
I have the latest bios installed (2.053.E6) and drivers for the motherboard (nForce 15.23). The graphics card is using 181.22. It runs Vista x64.
The problem is the computer runs a little slow. For example, when opening a program like firefox, it takes about 1 full second for the program to start. Although that is not a long time, it is noticeably slower then my other desktop, which sports a Athlon 5200+ (Windsor) also running Vista x64. Other examples of its sluggishness would be clicking the start button, opening windows like control panel or my computer, putting the computer to sleep, everything. To be clear, it is not really slow; it is just not as fast as it should be.
Benchmarks, however, show the new E8400 computer smokes the older Athlon one. Games also run much faster, but that isn't much of an indicator as the graphics cards are very different between the two computers.
As for the other problem, which may or may not be related, periodically my monitor loses the signal from my computer, and it can only be fixed by restarting. The Windows Problem Report classifies these events as video hardware errors. This problem only occurs when my computer was overclocked. I had my FSB running at 444 mhz (CPU at 4 ghz). The ram was not overclocked. Orthos and Prime95 showed no errors after a couple of 12 hour testing sessions. Since returning the computer to stock speeds, I have not experienced this video error. However, it has only been a couple of weeks, and it simply may not have occurred yet.
Other software wise, I don't install any crap on my computer, so I doubt it is spyware based. Plus this has been going on since the computer was first built. I have gone through the running services and weeded everything out; crap running in the background doesn't seem to be the source of the problem.
I would rather not reinstall windows, if possible. Any ideas of what could be going on?