OK... I have a slightly older Compaq 5660. It came with Win 98 1st edition (junk). I recently upgraded to XP Pro and then added SP1. It ran ok, but kind of slow so I upgraded the RAM from the original 128MB to 384MB. (that should be enough right?) This seemed to help but still acting kinda funny. I know it's just a P2 450, but I'm not running ANY programs to speak of and I disabled some of the non-crutial services in XP. I defraged the hard drive... did everything I could think of. Runs ok... but not GREAT. Someone mentioned to me that the service pack may be to blame. This could be true but I noticed in the device manager that I have yellow exclimation points over my primary and secondary IDE Channels. (I dont even know what that is) I tried to reinstall the driver through the device manager but it couldnt find a driver. Could anyone help me make some sense out of this and maybe point me in the right direction to find the proper driver I need to install or whatever has to be done? Any info would be great! thanks.

try removing the channels in device manager, reboot the system and let xp pick them up as new hardware and reinstall the drivers. brax

Just tried that. When windows started, It told me it found new hardware. It said it found: IDE Channel, Primary IDE Channel, and Secondary IDE Channel. The device manager still shows the exclimations over the primary and secondary IDE channel. Any other Ideas?

The problem might have something to do with the fact that you did an upgrade as opposed to a clean install. An upgrade keeps too much of the old OS's system files. If at all possible, format the drive and do a clean install of XP.

also a good Idea... but I DID do a clean install of XP. I did NOT just upgrade 98. (I should have said that earlier) I'm thinking that xp just doesnt have the correct driver for my hardware? I dont know where to look for the correct driver if it exists.

Upgrading your RAM from 128 to a million isn't going to help, at least probably. If you have a pipe 1 inch thick, and you want to force 128 gallons of water thru it, it's going to take a while. The solution isn't to add more water, right? Right. The solution is to buy a bigger pipe. That would entail a new computer.

let me simplify my original question: could having exclimation points over my primary and secondary IDE channels in the device manager cause my computer to act wierd? I THINK this means that the proper driver is not installed am I right? and where might I look for the right driver if that is in fact the problem.