Long story cut short ...

I had a spare P4 HT processor, so I tried it in an old XP PC that had a non-HT Celeron-D in it. Unfortunately, it was a disaster. PC ran very slow. Put the old processor back in.

Mostly it runs OK, but about once a day it runs so slow that a ten minute Primegrid task takes 7 hours. Rebooting brings it back to normal for another day.

I *think* that the problem is the HAL was replaced with the multiprocessor one. And there's no 'downgrade' path

I've replaced the RAM, the PSU, the processor cooling fan etc (I had spares luckily!) but nothing fixes it. Oh, there are no useful restore points for some reason

The obvious thing is to reinstall XP or install Ubuntu. But the CD drive doesn't work, it has no kbd/monitor/mouse (VNC only) and as this was a $30 throwaway PC I'm not going to spend any money on it

Oh, I'm OK with upgrading hardware. Done loads of processor and memory upgrades without problems, regularly fix my clunky Dells (PSUs and fans) etc so I don't think it's a hardware problem.


Ideas anyone?

Al.