Re: WinXP serious slowdown ??

Hey,
Thanks for the hard drive suggestion - I used Gateway's hard drive
diagnostic utility and I got the following message "Re-Allocated Sector
Count = 1" , Threshold is 5 - hence the error.

I tried the nitwits at Gateway Support who had 3 options 1) Reformat,
2) More Memory and 3) Buy better spyware (I have Pest Patrol Pro) from
their software store.

The 2nd and 3rd are wrong, because I know my system is Virus/Spyware
free. Looks like it's a bad sector issue - but can that cause such an
intense slowdown of the system?

I can't even watch videos, they only play for 2 seconds, while it
"rebuffers" so as to speak, both audio and video. It almost behaves
like i have only 16mb or so of ram, instead of 512mb ....

Is there any other option than to reformat - I use a dual boot with
Win/Linux using the Linux based bootloader for multi-OS loads. If I
have to reformat, I'm going to image the Windows partition, and then
format the partition - and then reimage the OS back on.

Would this work?

.