XP system problems

[Mhertzler]

I am not sure what is causing it, but my computer has had a lot of unusual problems lately.

It frequently takes over a minute to boot, and finally comes up with a "recovered from serious error" message. When I click the send button, it says the problem is with my graphics driver. I have updated that driver, and it makes no difference.

Other problems include quirky dialup of the internet, an inability to defragment the drive, and frequent crashes.

All of these problems started happening at once. Any idea what caused it? In the week before this started I had:
a) installed a second hard disk on the computer
b) downloaded updates on XP
c) removed a device from a USB port.

I uninstalled the second hard disk, and that seems to have helped. Any idea what may be causing my problems? Thanks in advance.

[Play_The_0dds]

one of those xp updates wouldnt have been directX9 would it? you video card may not work well with it, even with the latest drivers.

[Azn_tweaker]

would system restore help?

[Mhertzler]

Originally posted by known_criminal
one of those xp updates wouldnt have been directX9 would it? you video card may not work well with it, even with the latest drivers.

Well, I guess that is the problem with allowing the computer to constantly load updates from windows. I am never sure exactly what it is doing. I guess I need to look at directex and see what is there. I'll give it a try.

Thanks for the suggestion.

[Mhertzler]

I'll explore the directx lead. Thanks. In the meantime I found another possible problem. I found the following conflict that is new on my computer. Could this be part of the reason I have a problem with the S3 graphics card?

IRQ 16 S3 Graphics ProSavage Compaq
IRQ 16 NEC PCI to USB Open Host Controller

I should add that I had a lot of problems with the mouse and keypad when this problem started. Frequently, after waiting 3 minutes for it to boot, I would find that either the mouse or the keyboard did not work, and would need to reboot again. You can imagine how much fun it was to reboot a machine several times at 3 minutes per reboot on a machine that crashed frequently!

I moved the mouse and keypad to different USB ports and removed the second hard drive. The system is now usable. The crashes are far less freqquent, the boot takes about 1 minute instead of 3, and the mouse always works. But it still slow in booting and quircky in operation. I think I now have the mouse and keypad on the USB card mentioned above.

All this on a new computer that is less than 1 year old.

Any suggestions?