Very slow pc suddenly
 

Last week I get a message that my HD is failing, to back up and get new HD, at the same time the pc became extremely slow I thought it was because of the HD failing. So I installed a new hd WD 60 gig Caviar got the new bios and stuff.(this hard drive used to be the slave and is only 12 month old I formatted it and over wrote it with 0's for clean install)
but pc is still slow, to give you and idea how slow I took my time to install XP it took 10 hours too load the cd and install and restart ??
I have checked out the ram seems to be ok
Changed the wide cable between MB and HD no difference in speed
It is also telling my that it can not find harddrive disk 1.

Dell 8100
P4 1.4 GB 423 socket
512 MB Dynamic Rambus
Nvidia Gforce4 ti 4800e

It used to be fast had it tuned so it was faster than my Dell 8250 with P4 2.8GB 256 MB ram

Thanks Piesen
What happed to it im lost

Honestly, it can only be 1 of three things. Hard Drive, Motherboard, or RAM. I suggest trying to get a hold of a motherboard, and seeing if that works.

I second Church's prognosis.

Symptoms: sudden, overwhelming slowness.
Cannot find harddisk 1.
Install WORKS, but not well.
IDE cable functioning normally.
Two hard drives have the same problem.

It sounds like a motherboard issue.

One other possibility... I don't know if your motherboard does this or not, but check the settings in the IDE connections. It's POSSIBLE that when it detected a "hard drive failure" that it severely limited the throughput of the IDE connector, as a safety measure. I've never heard of a motherboard that does this, but I hear lots of new stuff every day, so it's something to look for. Just look for primary and secondary IDE speeds. If they're lower than normal, see if you can boost them back up.

Thanks 4 ur input I will give it a try and once i find out whats the problem I will post it and if im able to fix it at all

Thanks again

Piesen

Found the problem
In the bios the cpu was checked to compatible enstead of Normal, why this would happen I dont know, I wonder if it did it by itself when the harddrive quit on me. Has any one else heard of this ??
I found out what to check by using www.pcpitstop.com a great place

Piesen

No, I haven't seen any motherboard do this in particular, but like I said before... I see them do new things every day. Every company has a different idea of what makes a good motherboard, so that's why I suggested looking at bios. Good eye, chap.