Computer Troubleshooting: Emergency Shut Down and Slow Performance

[Shadow]

Hey guys, last night my computer was fine until a game froze but since it was about 2:00 AM i just did an emergency shut down and went to bed. Anyways today when i put my computer on it moved painlessly slow. When I try to use the internet it says not responding, almost none of my programs can load up and only after 5 tries i got the internet to work...but extremely slowly.

Just to get rid of the problem (and future reference) can anyone tell me how to dump hardrive and start over?

By the way I am on my friends laptop right now

 

[dduardo]

Which version of windows are you using?

 

[Shadow]

Windows XP home ed.

 

[Chrono]

It may not be a bad idea to scan for viruses.

 

[Shadow]

tried...nortons working about as good as everything else

 

[Chrono]

Have the virus definitions been updated?

 

[dduardo]

Sounds like you corrupted some files on your partition. Just put the windows xp cd in the cdrom and boot from it. You'll eventually get to a screen that asks to to select the partion you want to install windows on. Delete the partition and create a new one. Then format the drive with NTFS. I would normally do it quick, but in this case I would go with normal version which does error checking. Let the installation finish and reinstall all your apps.

 

[Chrono]

Just make sure you back up everything.

 

[Shadow]

Thanks, both of you I am on my way to do that now

 

[Artman]

With XP I would try a "Restore" first. Just pick a restore point back before your computer went bad and try it. If it is corrupted files like dduardo suggested this might not help, but it's worth a shot. I've used it a couple of times with XP after a bad driver installation and it worked pretty good.