"My Computer" won't load

[Belaraiya]

Okay, this is really weird. I've spent the better part of today formatting, reinstalling, scanning, and defraging my system but now I have a new problem.

I did a clean install with an actual legit copy of XP SP2 on my computer today, did a virus update, virus scan, defragmented the driver and all that - but now My Computer takes over 5 minutes just to open! It's near on impossible to use it, as it takes forever to load.

I'm not downloading anything, have a ton of RAM, don't have anything else running, and yet the little flashlight is waving around aimlessly.

Help? Nothing else is running slow, just My Computer

[leira]

Couple possibilities off the top of my head. Have you got anything in your cd drive or your floppy drive when my computer is taking forever to load? Frequently a poorly burned CD will cause issues like this, as my computer tries to read the cd and will just sit there waiting until it does.

Another possibility is that it's your virus scanner. Ironically, you'll often get far better performance out of a virus infested computer than you will out of a computer with a virus scanner constantly running. If your virus scanner is on, try turning it off. It'll probably have an icon in the bottom right corner of your taskbar if it's one of the constantly running types.

[Pyrosama]

It wouldn't hurt to go into setup to reload your bios defaults I don't think. I'm not sure how that is affected when you format and reinstall the OS. The factory defaults are set because of compatibility issues and so if worse comes to worse, go into those settings and "load default settings". It is an option when you press F10 while Windows is loading. I forget which area allows you to reload defaults, but you can go through it and check it out. Just don't make changes that you are not sure about.

The load defaults shouldn't ever be a problem unless you did something like exchange out a processor or reconfigure your storage devices, etc.

[Belaraiya]

Thanks Leira, I'll try turning the virus protection off. It's a different one to the one I was using previously which I had no issue with except it taking over my entire system and dragging it down.

Pyro - I never actually thought of that. When I did the install, I removed several partitions from my hard drive that had corrupted, to form one big drive. I haven't gotten around to repartitioning them (don't honestly see the point), so I'll try poking my BiOS back to default and see what that does

[Rosuav]

If you can get online with this, grab me some time when I'm not flat-out working and I'll walk you through playing bios... saw your question on Trivia but wasn't there at the time.

[Belaraiya]

I swore at it for a while and threatened it with a hammer and its working now... the problem is half my drivers are missing and I can't find them

One drama after another