After power outage system is acting weird

[Bengalengel]

Last night I lost power for around and hour. I had my windows XP computer running with a couple applications going. After rebooting today, a message appeared saying something like " your hardware has changed significantly and you must reactivate windows". I did, and verified my software.

However, my computer has been acting strangely. For instance, I had itunes, dreamweaver, and foxit reader open and the CPU useage went through the roof just from moving my mouse around the DW interface. This is really slowing down performance.

My question is what kind of scan can I do on my system to make sure everything is ok? And if so, what do you guys make of the new performance problems?
Thanks

[Kareeser]

The most likely culprit is that the PSU may have been fried and may need replacing. I had a brownout take out my Hard Drive once.

Seems like your processor may be slowing down, which may be because of the processor, or any number of other parts.

Try replacing your PSU, and see if that helps.

[jamesrpm]

I had a similar thing happen , even was slow after a repair install of Windows. I shut down and pulled the plug from the wall outlet let it sit for a few minutes , plugged it in and it booted just fine, something just wasn't closing all the way while there was still power to the system.

[Bengalengel]

well, I tried unplugging, waiting, and plugging back in and that didn't help. I think if the power supply was fried my computer wouldn't be working at all right?
Plus it is a pretty good power supply. Antec Neopower 480.
I am curious if anyone knows what it means when Windows detects such a significant "hardware change" so that I have to reactivate. Does this mean that something is definately wrong with some part of my hardware?

[Bengalengel]

A quick update of what I have tried so far.

note - I cannot do a repair install of windows xp. when I try a prompt appears saying my version of windows is older than the current version or something like that and I will lose everything! Don't want to go there yet. Does this happen when your disc is only sp1?

I have run memtest
checkdisc
a seagate disc diagnostic on my HD

all the hardware checked thus far seems ok. The checkdisc program ran after I rebooted, but then windows came up.... I am assuming there were no problems.

However, when I used the seagate diagnostic from the ultimate boot cd it recognized two HDs. I only have one. both passed, but the phantom drive passed with inconsistencies.

Anyway, does anyone know how I should go about doing a repair install in my situation?

Thanks for all the help so far. Sorry for the crosspost.

[glc]

If you have SP2, you can't repair reinstall with a SP1 CD. You have to slipstream a new CD with SP2 or uninstall SP2 before doing the repair.

Before proceeding farther, I'd make sure you have a good data backup. You can try the recovery console and fixboot and/or fixmbr. That phantom drive in the diags has me concerned.