Problem with first upgrade

A New Guy

A New Guy

New Member
I upgraded my computer about a month and a half ago from an eMachines T6212 http://www.emachines.com/support/product_support.html?cat=Desktops&subcat=T-Series&model=T6212 These are my upgrades:
Motherboard to MSI 760GM-E51 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813130254
Processor to AMD Athlon X4 635 Propus 2.9 GHz Quad-Core http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103882&cm_re=635-_-19-103-882-_-Product
Power Supply to Ultra 750 Watt http://www.compusa.com/applications..._re=Homepage-_-Spot 18-_-CatId_106_ULT-LSP750
Graphics card to nVidia GeForce GT 240 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814127483&Tpk=GT 240 (close to one in link, only mine has DDR3 instead of GDDR5
RAM to G.Skill Ripjaws 2x2 GB DDR3 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231277

Graphics card upgrade occurred last January; processor, motherboard, and RAM upgrade occurred mid-August; and power supply upgrade occurred yesterday. My problem is that my computer cannot withstand certain applications. One of them is watching YouTube. Within watching two videos that are about 10 min. each in length, my computer would always freeze up and make a huge beep directly from the computer either in the first or second episode. My second problem is that whenever playing a video game, it runs flawlessly for about 30 seconds. After that, the frame rate drops incredibly to the point where the game is not playable. This has occurred in CoD 4 demo and Red Faction: Guerrilla. This even happened with Halo 1, although it took a longer time for the frame rate to drop. I originally thought that I had a bad power supply, so I bought this new 750 Watt, upgrade from a 400 Watt that has been running for about 3 years now. My problems still persist. Some additional info is that I never reformatted my XP before or after I made the motherboard/processor/RAM upgrade. Could this be my problem? I've also gotten a few vicious viruses within the past 2 months... the System in my task manager currently takes up exactly 107,432 K. It has only gone up from a month ago, when it was about 104,000 K. 2 weeks ago, it was around 106,000. Also, about 2 months ago, I tried defragging my hard drive. At least 50% of it was fragmented. After the 5-hour defragging process, it was still 50% fragmented and I actually lost about 100 MB of space. I obviously have something seriously wrong with my computer... but I'm not sure what to do next, or what the sources of all my problems are. I greatly appreciate any help you can give. :)
 
Im coming to the conclusion that you havent reformatted your machine for around 3/4 years? If thats the case, you've had Virus problems, and made dramatic hardware changes and upgrades, i would strongly recommend a reformat.
 
You definately need to format and reinstall windows as you upgraded the motherboard without reinstalling windows most likely.
 
wellhellothere, you are correct. The last time I reformatted my hard drive and reinstalled Windows was in December, right before upgrading my graphics card. All of my problems also had occurred immediately after installing my new mobo, processor, and RAM. Judging by your responses, I assume that it's 99% likely that all my problems will be fixed if I just reinstall Windows? If that doesn't work, could there be any other reasons for the YouTube and game problems? Could have any of my other computer components been damaged due to running on a 400W power supply for about 2 months?
 
Thank you for helping me with this problem. I'll definitely reformat my computer, but I'd like to transfer some files over to an external hard drive first. Unfortunately, my external hard drive appears to not be working too well... it is recognized in my computer, but it doesn't let me copy files to the external hard drive. If I were to make a new folder in the external hard drive itself, I will usually get a message saying that it couldn't find the file (even though I am CREATING a new file solely from and onto the hard drive). Sometimes it works, and I am able to copy a few Mb from my computer over to the external hard drive. After that, however, it starts giving me the message again that it couldn't find the file. For example, I tried copying a demo of Batman: Arkham Asylum onto my hard drive. It copied the first few Mb, but after that, stated it couldn't find the rest of the file. I downloaded a manager for this particular external hard drive from the manufacturer (which is Seagate). It has a "test hard drive" option. It had told me that my external hard drive is malfunctioning and needs to be RMA'd. Also, after the "cannot find file" message starts popping up, the manager doesn't even detect that the external hard drive is connected. :( Looks like it'll be a few weeks until I reformat the computer. Are there any known problems with Seagate external hard drives that are similar to what I am experiencing? I bought the hard drive about 2-3 years ago, and it has been doing this for about a year or two now. My other computer hadn't even let me view the files on the hard drive for about a year. Randomly, my computer just started to let me view them a few months ago. If worst comes to worst, I still have a 5-year limited warranty if there is something defective with the hard drive. Is there any way I can recover the information from the hard drive before I RMA it? Once again, thanks for the help.
 
If you are going to be formatting, a good way to keep your settings for windows and personal items (everything in your user folder) is by using Windows Easy Transfer.
 
I'd reinstall windows, if problems still persist, pull out one of the memory dimms and see how it runs on half memory, then swap the 2 dimms and run it again
If it won't boot with one of the dimms you've got some chumped memory and should exchange the dimm

also check that your voltages are set correctly in CMOS
 
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