My hard drive, about a week ago, decided that it wasnt going to read large sections of itself. I pulled an emergency evacuate onto another drive, bought a new one, and began to install XP, my drivers, and all the Windows updates (Including SP2).
I took the time to also install HL2, HL1, and Rainbow 6-3.
Everything seemed fine untill I booted HL1. To my chagrin, it seemed to enter bullet-time every 3 seconds, for about 5 seconds, followed with a hint of normal speed. Repeat.
Obviously, you all know this system should be able to tear through HL1, but it doesn’t. I did experience some success with using the software renderer (I had previously been using OpenGL or D3D, both with similar results), but even it had glimpses of the slowdown.
I tried running R6-3, and the problem was even worse there. It’s as if I am playing Max Payne with permanent bullet time-- sounds play perfectly fine, but the animations, and my own movement, drag at what might be about half speed.
I called Dell, and they suggested I pay $50 to discuss the issue. I have no intent on doing that.
I tried installing the latest video drivers from Dell, I tried installing the suggested drivers from Microsoft update, I tried nuking all the drivers then repeating the above, to no avail. I tried rolling back drivers directly after SP2 install, with no effect.
I reformatted my drive and repeated all those other things, with absolutely no effect. The only thing that worked was not installing SP2, or pulling a system resore to before SP2 was on there. To be sure, I also installed DirectX 9.0c before I installed SP2, and the games worked fine.
I have narrowed the dirty culprit to be SP2. Mind you, it all worked fine before my drive died, SP2 and all. I don’t know what to do, and I’m at my wits end. I’ve been playing Super Smash Bros. Melee at dangerous levels to fill the void of PC gaming.
Help me. Please.
P.S. One thing I forgot to mention-- over the summer I upgraded my card from a 32mb to a 64mb. I stayed in-model. Dunno if that would make a difference. The machine took the upgrade quite fine, I never needed to change anything.