Do I need a new hard drive?

I have a 5 year old Dell Dimension 8200. I have upgraded the RAM to
1G. It recently gave me the Blue Screen of Death, and someone helped
me reformat the hard drive. He said the problem wasn't the memory,
although it turns out I did have a few registry problems and some
rootkits we got rid of. I started to re-add all my software (from
discs) and files (from my backup external drive) and now it is working
so terribly slowly. My question is how can I tell if the hard drive
is the problem and whether I should just buy a new one? I've tried to
do some maintenance in Safe Mode, but while working in Safe Mode was
fine, it didn't solve the problem when I restarted my computer in
normal mode. Are there other things I should try first? I'm
wondering about the hard drive because I assume that the hard drive
reformat got rid of all the bugs and kinks in the operating system and
software. I don't know what else to do . . .

<adrienneanson@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:1175370626.513873.110060@n59g2000hsh.googlegr oups.com...
> I have a 5 year old Dell Dimension 8200. I have upgraded the RAM to
> 1G. It recently gave me the Blue Screen of Death, and someone helped
> me reformat the hard drive. He said the problem wasn't the memory,
> although it turns out I did have a few registry problems and some
> rootkits we got rid of. I started to re-add all my software (from
> discs) and files (from my backup external drive) and now it is working
> so terribly slowly. My question is how can I tell if the hard drive
> is the problem and whether I should just buy a new one? I've tried to
> do some maintenance in Safe Mode, but while working in Safe Mode was
> fine, it didn't solve the problem when I restarted my computer in
> normal mode. Are there other things I should try first? I'm
> wondering about the hard drive because I assume that the hard drive
> reformat got rid of all the bugs and kinks in the operating system and
> software. I don't know what else to do . . .
>

Although it would not hurt to run the manufacturer's HD diagnostic...
if you did not load the chipset drivers for your motherboard...the HD might
be running in the PIO mode...
have a look in the control panel and see



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<adrienneanson@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:1175370626.513873.110060@n59g2000hsh.googlegr oups.com...
>I have a 5 year old Dell Dimension 8200. I have upgraded the RAM to
> 1G. It recently gave me the Blue Screen of Death, and someone helped
> me reformat the hard drive. He said the problem wasn't the memory,
> although it turns out I did have a few registry problems and some
> rootkits we got rid of. I started to re-add all my software (from
> discs) and files (from my backup external drive) and now it is working
> so terribly slowly. My question is how can I tell if the hard drive
> is the problem and whether I should just buy a new one? I've tried to
> do some maintenance in Safe Mode, but while working in Safe Mode was
> fine, it didn't solve the problem when I restarted my computer in
> normal mode. Are there other things I should try first? I'm
> wondering about the hard drive because I assume that the hard drive
> reformat got rid of all the bugs and kinks in the operating system and
> software. I don't know what else to do . . .

Might be software - perhaps something is running in the background?

When you re-installed everything, did you install newer, more recent virus
software? This could slow things down considerably compared with old
editions. Perhaps it is doing a system scan in the background after
installing?