Sluggish PC performance...

before I get flamed:

No viruses, no malware of any sort or disk fragmentation; I just did a clean install.

Specs:

Intel Core 2 Duo @ 2.0GHZ each
2GB DDR2 RAM(I think it's 800MHZ)
GeForce 8600 GT 512 MB

I already got two BSOD's, so there's definitely something up. Is there such thing as driver non-compatibility? I didn't read what the BSOD said, I got home and was drunk... but it was something about a driver.

The loading screen of Windows fades in slowly and it jerks, I assume that that shouldn't happen...

I also get occasional hangs for a sec. or two.

I'm guessing the HDD is at fault here, but I'm not really sure... Anyone know some common causes for these sort of things(apart from viruses and etc)?

Most likely the driver error message had to do with the graphics - video card.

^^ yeh sounds like a driver issue, download the new 181.20 drivers from nvidea there quality and gave me an extra 10% FPS in crysis

[alexander224]

Didn't you just buy that card I think? If you had an ATi card before that, you should uninstall those drivers.

Yep, just bough it, but I didn't have an ATI before. I was just using the mobos embedded video card.

This is starting to get on my nerves. I'm going to get a detailed report of the specs at my work pc, then I'll compare them to this one. I don't see how the PC I have at work runs better than this one...

PS: I installed the latest drivers and DX but still no luck...
PPS: I also re-installed windows with a different CD, because maybe it was the installation that was faulty, but alas, it was not.

Another note: When I press TAB to see the BIOS post-something, the scrolling is jerky... as if I don't know. It's just slow. It shouldn't be like that. So there are video problems before I load into Windows. Could the card be faulty?