cheers will have aread through now

some answers here:
http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en/vssetup/thread/2ce771eb-4e3e-4da3-89eb-f555d10018ca

yes its a legit copy.will try getting the installer straight from MS site, its the process mscorsvw.exe thats causing the problem, soon as i abort this it speeds up again, but this is something to do with the .net install

Ahh OK. Well do that but don't install the .net updates, download the full installers from the Microsoft website and install them in order - i.e. v1, v2, v3.5 or whatever, v4 etc. etc. see if that works.

I would also be checking the Event Viewer logs for clues as to why it's not installing properly.

BTW - is this a legit copy of Windows you are installing, not some dodgy slipstreamed torrent?

done that 3 times, and its an sp3 version of xp

Reinstall XP (fresh install after format), then install SP2 and then SP3, and then do the Windows updates.

well atm cant even get it to bring up start menu or task manager its running that slow, its as if its trying to continue install of updates or something, if i can cancel a few proccesses seems to speed up again, but soon as i start to update it goes slow again, so doubt ill be even able to run any apps.
have done a check disk on reboot but just stays at 0% and also done it in recovery console, gets to 75% then shows 50% again and just hangs there

doesn't sound too bad.

Could well be the hard drive is on its last legs and hand lots of bad sectors. As it find these it will be moving data around which all takes time.

There is some free software about that will read the "SMART" data from the drive. It would probably give you a good idea if its starting to fail

pentium centrino 2ghz, and 2gb of ram, but its fast after fresh install, but after youve done a few updates etc it starts going stupidly slow again, it now got to point now its taking forever to do something even though its a fresh install, im thinking hard drive still
had to abort update again of a .net service pack, and now runs slow each boot

What spec is it?

A friend asked me to make their computer faster but when i looked at it, it was 5 years old with 512MB of RAM etc. No matter what you do its not going to be snappy like a modern system

Probably m$ trying to get you to upgrade

it seems to start running slow when updating/installing the .net frameworks and updates for them, they just dont install some just say failed, and then it usually just hangs, up until then it seems to run fine, but will continuously run slow after this point especially if i cancel the update, have noticed there a progams running in task manager to do with the updates, but have left laptop sitting for 2 hrs and hasnt budged. seem to get unmountable boot volume aswell which chkdsk/r gets to 75% then all of a sudden shows 50% again then doesnt budge,
tried fixboot aswell but doesnt work either.
onto my 3rd install of windows going to install each .net on its own see if that helps

i was looking on amazon, but all seemed to be £70 region. but he wants to be using things like photoshop on it aswell, which ran quite slow on it last time

you can get a hard drive for about £50 :boggle:

nah wouldnt be vga drivers, as that would just make visual things choppy, but at a guess id say hard drive failure aswell, ive told him hes probably just best off getting a new laptop, as for price of 120gb hd or similar isnt that cheap

I'd guess possible start to hard drive failure. (I'm probably wrong)

Back up just in case.

Then try a fresh drive and see if the same problem occurs.

[Edited on 24-01-2012 by adiohead]

All drivers installed? If VGA drivers aren't installed, it will appear 'choppy'

trying to sort out a mates laptop, said its started running quite slow, was just going to get rid of all the junk but he just said wipe hard drive clean and start fresh. so reinstalled win xp, seems fine alot smoother and quicker,
start to download update etc, get to the last few which are .net framework updates i believe, but it eventually just hangs even after few hours, so cancel updates, and restart laptop to try again,
but you can hear the welcome or shutdown audio is really slow and juddery, even after restart. this only seems to happen after it hangs on .net updates, as this is my 2nd attempt at fresh install and does it again with same updates.
there is literally nothing else on laptop except for avg antivirus.
could this be a sign that hard drive is slowly starting to fail??
have also noticed cpu usage is quite high alot aswell although cant really see anything that using that much cpu resources.
its an acer aspire 1640 so quite old laptop, but is still intel centrino 2ghz with 2gb of ram etc