if you have any detailed knowlege of the inner workings of Windows XP, post here, THIS IS REALLY LONG AND BORING, so here goes my story:

girlfriend was complaining of computer running extremely slow. computer is a p4 2.66 ghz with 512 mb ram + 256mb graphics memory. checked on what processes were running, there were a couple (fontutil.exe and mainps.exe) that were taking anywhere from 60 mb to 250 mb of memory for themselves and the page file was going crazy all the time. on my other computer running the same operating system, those two files weren't found anywhere on the hard disk so they couldn't have been system files. I downloaded most current McAfee virus updates and AdAware updates and scanned everything. found a few adwares, but no viruses. cleaned them. still ran slow. ended the two processes named above, system seemed perfectly stable, and could run without problems without slowing down. however, they would reappear upon restart. decided those two files were unnecessary... fontutil.exe was part of some 3rd party usb driver package so I just deleted it. don't know what mainps.exe was, but deleted that also (computer ran fine without it for several hours). restarted, computer ran fine. decided to download sp2, since girlfriend didn't do it before when I suggested it. :P computer downloaded sp2, ran the instal, restarted, and that's when I entered computer hell. The computer froze during "windows is starting up" and wouldn't get past there. ran the recovery console, ran chkdsk /r, and it found errors and fixed them. still no dice. ran the operating system repair from the winxp cd, and encountered several strange errors during install.

so...

need to reformat and reinstall everything. however I don't know if I want to use the same hard drive; I don't want to buy a new one but the old one seems like it could be failing. is there any way to tell? it's a Western Digital 60 gig. I really hate computers

 

the HD is usually all or nothing. its either busted or it works

 

A simular thing happend to me. My computer was running fine and then after installing sp2 i got some crazy driver confliction error. It was so bad that it would not let me enter the recovery console.
have you tried to boot into safe mode?

I recently said ---- to windows and i use fedora linux %90 of the time. It stays clean and runs well

 

Did you try safe mode or last known good?

It would've been a good idea to get rid of malware before upgrading to SP2.

And what EXACTLY are these errors?

My car makes this funny sound....what's wrong? :P

-Tim

 

I guess you misunderstood; sorry I don't have the errors. Based on the ---- that went down and the way the computer was behaving i'm wondering if I should reformat+reinstall and call it good, or is a new hd or memory likely necessary.

 

how do you figure its a hardware issue when you messed with software and its messed up now? the HD is fine just format and install again and stay away from sp2 cause it messed it up last time

 

adjust your vafc settings. vtec isnt kicking in aty teh richgt rpm. try 5600.

 

What spyware and adware tools are you using? try spybot search and destroy and adware6. Those two seem to do pretty good. There are a few memory load test utilities you can try to determine if you have a bad stick or failing stick of ram but I would guess you have an infection! Also turn all that crap off that XP does not need. Heres a great site to tune it up. http://www.blackviper.com/WinXP/supertweaks.htm

 

www.redhat.com
www.suse.com

you decide what you want. personally, go with suse9.1. its easy, and it doesnt ---- up unless you make it ---- up. seriously. instal linux on her box. just tell her its a new windows or something.

 

i had a scsi drive failing for like 2-3months and didnt know it till it totally failed. i was having wierd symtoms but didnt know what it was until 1 of the 4 scsi drives failed in a raid 5 configuration.