Windows choking and CD-Roms die!...

Strange problem w/ my gf's computer. She has a SONY desktop... model is RX270 or something... (has to buy SONY because of the looks :rolleyes: But it's cool, I picked it for her, it has an ASUS mb, ASUS Geforce 2 MX video card (!), IBM HD (I added a 2nd IBM 60G later)... P3 866 w/ 128MB RAM (I added 256MB)

It was running fine until recently, it started to "choke"... it's very noticeable if u listen to mp3, it plays for like 1 sec, choke 0.5 sec, play 1 sec, choke 0.5 sec... ... etc etc. If you move the mouse in circle in a continuous movement, it will move for 1 sec, then stop 0.5 sec, move 1 sec, then stop 0.5 sec... continue like that forever! The box isn't crashing though...

The other problem is, the CD-Roms will "disappear" after the box has been turned on for a while... this problem is getting worse and worse. It used to be that I just need to restart, but now even if I do a hard shut down... and wait... they still won't come back on at boot up (BIOS can't find them!) I'll have to leave the computer off all day and then at night when I come home, I'll have the CD-ROMS back (for a while).

I was using Win 2K Pro and started having that CDROM problem. I upgraded to Win XP and now also gets the choking problem.

Any ideas? Please help!

Mmm lots could be wrong - possibly it is a simple as the ide cable from the hard drives and cd/dvd drivesis are not quite seated properly, or it is trapped - replace with a known good one. CDrom cables should be 40 pin standard ide, the hard drive ones should be 80 pin ata cables.

then on to with software

Start with a virus check Free online one here (For the purposes of this excercise we must assume your antivirus has been compromised.

Next on to Spybot download it and install it and then immediately go to the online section and get the updates, download them, restart spybot and run the search and destroy.

Now run a scandisk and defrag on the hard drives

Any improvement?

If no, how many programs startup? Look in your system tray - how many icons there (don't forget to unhide them)

Right click the start bar, select task manager, processes tab, how many processes are running? What are they?