Just a story to put on file, Just in case: Resource Drain!

[Kiwi]

There is always a first time for everything. I had one and not any Search Tool turned up anything similar. Here's how it started, developed, and was cured.

My oldest PC is also the one that has been the most stable, most trouble free, etc. I use it more than any when I want to surf the Internet, and it's my eMail hub. It's nearly three years old, and has received steady incremental upgrades, the last being an FX 5200 video adapter last spring.

Following an interesting summer and fall season, I had a newer and faster computer for gaming again, and a spare PC in between the oldest and the newest in power, though not in age (it's actually newer than the fastest and most powerful of four here). I really didn't "need" a backup PC of quite so modern a level, but I built it so inexpensively - - and then decided to transfer most of that one's innards to an HTPC style enclosure and have a PVR of my own.

The FX 5200 may end up "too slow" for an HTPC, but I had acquired an unused, NOS, PNY GF4 Ti 4200. So the 5200 presently is to go into that DVR. But as soon as the 4200 was in the old PC, the roof (system resources, user resources) literally fell in on that computer. It would start with only about 60% of resources available and rapidly go through those.

I had not installed any new software, unless you call NAV updates that, in weeks, and the existing nVidia software seemed happy to deal with a 4200. I didn't run an install for the 4200 because it didn't seem needed. BUT it was like a Trojan had been nestled in the Video Drivers for six or seven months and now it was time to go boom.

It just didn't seem possible (at first) that those video drivers were the culprits. So I tried other stuff. No luck. On the third day, I finally pulled the plug. Uninstalled all nVidia Everything. Ran the install that PNY included, and limited it to bare minimums of what was offered. No nView, no multiple display options chosen, nothing.

And it was what was needed. I started with almost 80% of resources available, and it's stayed above 65% ever since. Strange business.