HDD question

[GameJunkie72792]

im not sure where to post this, because im not exactley sure of the problem...

i have a newer compaq presario desktop, it runs win xp home, it has a great deal of lag, i thought maybe malware of some sort so i restored it and still lag, could it be a hdd problem, if not what could it possibly be?

 

[SNGX1275]

What kind of lag? How much RAM and are there tons of worthless programs loading up that may cause this? Or is it just lots slower than it should be? Have you checked to make sure the hard drive is in DMA mode rather than PIO? (device manager and then your ide controller if you have ide drive).

If you think its malware we can send you over to the security forum.

 

[GameJunkie72792]

no ive used several scans and the hdd is a is in dma, its just on startup and when i open programs it takes like 8 minutes to open norton (which is a great memory hog) but it used to open right away (4 months ago),
I have 1 gig of crucial sdram and after the restore it wiped all programs so there were no programs it was "like new" besides the lag