Unable To Get To Start To Shut Down

[gunsite]

New build Foxcon Winfast NF4K8AC mobo. AMD Athlon 64 3000+ 1.81Ghz. 1gig DDR400. NVidia GeForce 6600. Maxtor 160SATA. WD160. Liteon DVDRW.

Got the system installed with XP Pro and all was well until I installed the Winfast Utility CD and the VGA Driver CD.

I am now unable to go to the Start to shut down or go to All Programmes to find My Computer, etc. Clicking on any programme just takes ages.

I have not yet been able to make the internet connection to get SP2, etc. due to this problem. I tried to do a defrag but 1 per cent took more than 40 minutes.

Should I reformat C: to clear everthing out and reinstall, and if so how do I go about this? What about removing the battery to reset the BIOS?

Thanks again for helping me in solving the problem with the mobo shorting out.

[Cricket]

What happens if you boot into Safe Mode? Does the computer appear to function normally?

Go to the Maxtor web site and download the diagnostic utility and test your hard drive with it.

Cricket

[gunsite]

Have gone into Safe Mode and everything in this appears to be flying. Not like the snail pace out of Safe Mode.
Unable to get on the internet on the machine as it has not yet been set up.
What shall I do next.
Cannot believe the speed that I have got a reply from you genius.

[gunsite]

Have tried to run the Powermax Diagnostic but this is what appears on screen:
HIMEM cannot control Address Line 20.
A: pwrmaxen.exe
NO SWAP SPACE!

[gunsite]

Still unable to get the Maxtor diagnostic to get past NO SWAP SPACE message and have to shut down with Task Manager where I notice CPU usage is always at 100%. Do not have internet installed or MS Office. Unable to do anything on the machine other than boot up and shut down via Task Manager.
Should I reformat the drive?
Anyone got any further advice?

[Cricket]

If the computer runs well in Safe Mode but not when you're in normal Windows it most likely isn't a hardware problem but software related. At this point I would seriously consider wiping the hard drive and start over but don't install the WinFast utility.

Cricket

[gunsite]

Thanks, Cricket, for the answer.
However, would like to know how to go about cleaning out the hard drive as you suggest. Being a novice can you give it to me step by step? Have read all the threads but can not see what I need to do.
Wish the software problems could be solved as quickly as the hardware ones.

[glc]

Just do a XP setup like you did originally - and delete the partitions. Then create a new partition in the resulting unallocated space.

I would test your ram first - www.memtest.org - use any computer to download it and make the boot disk.

[gunsite]

Thanks to everyone who has sent in help. My new Build is now running perfectly. As Cricket suggested it must have been a software problem. The clean install worked well and was quite simple. Now on to build another computer using the pcmech CD.