Yeah that is a major pain, and it usually happens when you have the least time and have included lots of links etc that took ages to gather lol.

Anyway sorry for a slow reply, been at a wedding all day, I was the photographer lol, glad to see you've gotten this far, and yeah the test does look quite poor on the surface, but you need to bare in mind it is not the fastest of processors even when it was new, but it was no doubt more than capable of your needs which is all that matters, still looking at the test apart from the above, there is an area of concern I have, and thats the protection your running.

There are a few entry's showing, and I'm not sure how they are being seen, so if you could explain what is running in real time we can see if your breaking the one at a time rule, so let us know if Ad-Awareand Spybot (specifically the TeaTimer component) are running in real time, if they are your breaking the rule.
But check the above advice and let us know about this as well then we can advise more.

hmm, i'm running into an error when changing from "pio mode" to "dma if available". it won't change. it's stubborn. what do i do now?

This is typical of a problem I saw recently on a laptop that had a failing hard drive.

This is the solution (although, possibly temporary) to fix the problem. Go into control panel -> system -> hardware tab -> device manager again. Delete all the primary and secondary IDE drives as well as the controller. Reboot the computer, let Windows re-detect those devices, probably requiring a second reboot. Then, verify or change your DMA/PIO modes.

I have a bad feeling this mode is locked because your drive is reporting failure or read errors.

Please upload a copy of your system event log for me. Open event viewer (click start -> run -> type 'eventvwr' and press ENTER), right-click the system log, and click "Save log file as..." Save the log file as system.evt on your desktop. Right-click that file, click send to -> compressed zip folder and a new system.zip file will be created on your desktop. Please upload the file as an attachment in your next reply.

avg is the only protection i have running.

here's a system event log.

"Upload failed. You are not permitted to upload this type of file"

just got that error, and i can't view the .evt file in notepad.

Please zip the .evt file into a .zip and upload the .zip file.

Update us on the deletion on the ide controllers and their DMA mode.

wow, that dma fix seemed to do the trick! i uninstalled / reinstalled it. no more audio chopping, and the computer boots quicker/ runs faster. i learned something here. i'll donate some money when i get my next paycheck (starving college student here).

etidd.. I'm glad that your computer is running normally. And, I'm sure those involved are glad that you are willing to support the forum.. THank you.

However, I really need that system log uploaded to me. We are not done here. The problem you are experiencing is highly likely caused by a failing hard drive. You need to know, before it is too late.

As long as the TeaTimer component isn't running then that should be fine, just remember to pause\disable real time cover when running 3rd party scans and you should be fine, a reboot will load them again after.

Glad to see appleoddity has found something, I wouldn't of found that as I've never had that situation, not sure if appleoddity feels a diagnostic scan from Seagate would help identify anything here ?

k, here's a system log file. i think my hard drive will experience a failure soon.

The hard drive's SMART system is reporting imminent failure on the hard drive. This is exactly what I expected to find. You need to back up your data immediately. The hard drive will need to be replaced. At this point, you probably can still clone the contents of the current drive to a new drive and continue to operate normally without having to reinstall everything.

At this point, it may be time to seek the assistance of a qualified computer repair facility. Special tools and software will be needed beyond this point. Although replacing a hard drive is fairly simple, replacing or transferring the software will take some skill. You need to decide at this point if you think you should tackle the problem yourself or let a qualified repair facility handle it.

can i just use the windows xp backup utility?

Yes, as long as you manually locate and include your important data in the backup.

It cannot be used to clone your hard drive to a new drive.

hmm, if i'm a computer science student that knows computers very well, could you help me clone it now?