Plz help XP probs

[Spix]

This is long but plz plz read it, i really need help. Ok so yesterday i was playin Halo and my comp froze, i turned it off, back on and then ran system mechanic 6 overnight. When i got up it said that it repaired to fail one or more drives. Then it said that i needed to restart the comp to have optimizations take effect, so i did (there were more things it did than try to repair drives). When i turned it back on it took forever for me to log on to windows and the stuff to load. Except there was only one problem, my taskbar screws up. The little icons in bottom right didnt load, clock didnt change the time, and every time i put my mouse over it, it turned into an hourglass, like it was loading, but i dont think it was b/c i left it there for 3 hrs and it was the same. I can use everything i have on the desktop, so i tried running system mechanic and doing several things like restore points, and registry repairs. I know a little about XP, but on this one im completely stumped.:confused: Could it be b/c i only have 3.5 gigs left on my hard drive? I dont think so b/c thats actually high compared to what i normally have. Also one thing you should know is that it took me about 45 seconds (just a guess) to pull up my computer, so i could check how much space i got left. This is unusually slow, i have a 2.4 Ghz intel pentium 4 uniprocessor (one core) (socket 478), 512 mb ram, and a maxtor 60gb hard drive. Some more useful info may be that i just recently put a visiontek radeon X1550 (pci regular not express) in it, and my only guess is that its taking up too much of the power supply??? That probably has nothing to do with it tho. I am soon going to get a new hard drive (the one i have is too small) and transfer everything, do you think that will solve it?OK so heres an overview:
-Taskbar not working:mad:
-Extremely slow:mad:
-Using 100% of CPU when i open task manager, when im running like nothing.:mad:

Plz help.:)

[jbartlett323]

figure out whats using all that cpu and kill it! thats where i would start... provided its not a windows process like WINLOGON.exe... yes that little hard drive space can make for problems... things just don't page right... have you ran a defrag lately? prolly not if your down that low on space it won't let you unless you have 15% free space... and finally Maxtor... enough said... very possible if its an older Maxtor that got slightly warm it is dieing... run Speedfan and see what is says about fitness... thats all i can really say... hope this helps... :up:

[Spix]

ok thanks. ya its a old maxtor, came stock on comp i got in 2002. and it seems that whenever something is using all my cpu and i stop it, something else just uses it all, ive had that problem before which causes programs to take forever to start b/c something else is usin it all. and do you know why it would have processes not being run by any user, like under user instead of saying windows, or tommy (my name) it says nothing? And whats speedfan? and where can i get it?

[Newblar]

i think its a software issue, not a hardware problem
if you havent reformatted in a long while, then you probably should as of now

[Bail_w]

reformat your hdd and your issue will be gone. besides, format your main hdd once a while is a good thing; thats why we have second/external hdd for backups.

[Spix]

meaning swipe it clean? b/c i dont have backup drives

[jimmyz]

meaning swipe it clean? b/c i dont have backup drives

try to borrow a dvd burner or some usb keys or something. chances are you don't need to save very much just the personal stuff. games and such you can just re-load.

And it looks like you learned why backing up is important.. you never know when you could lose it all.

[[XC] riptide]

meaning swipe it clean? b/c i dont have backup drives

Spix... First off. use Mechanic 6 very very carefully. Its only really good for a few things. It can irreperably screw thigns up that it thinks are good things.

Secodnly, a HD with that low space free, casues problems. Massive fragmentation that can lead to harddrive read write loops that go on for ever.

Wipe the drive, or get a bigger one.

[Spix]

ok well now it is mostly working except my internet, i have a wireless adapter and the thing says its working properly in device manager, and it can send packets but not receive them :(. And also for some reason when i go to properties it only can get the first 3, all the stuff like dns and wins server is blank