Windows98SE

I'm with you. I think he posted a screenshot to his new account that he admitted he created. The VAC ban account has 135 games, and the account which doesn't have the VAC ban only has 14. Pretty sad.

Mac Mini's are pretty great as HTPC's... iPod's are were pretty good too. Everything else? Nah.

This is the worst analogy I've ever heard, and it's clear you didn't absorb any of what I said. Godspeed to you and your endeavors. I'm sure your clients will appreciate being billed for hours and hours of redundant work.

So I read this post a few hours ago, and let it sit and fester a bit so I don't fly off the handle while replying to you. I've worked in IT for 15 years. If I get an infected machine, I have three steps I follow: 1. Full scan with Malwarebytes 2. Combofix if the machine still indicates it is infected, I've sank too much time into it and it's time to... 3. Wipe Your suggestions to the OP were complete overkill. Given the information in the original post and few subsequent posts, you can make safe assumptions that: 1) The BHO that was installed was likely the only malware installed 2) The BHO was likely disabled and/or uninstalled by the Microsoft cleanup tool 3) The add/remove entry is probably just damaged from #2 and won't go away because it can't close with a proper status code. For sake of simplicity, I suggested Malwarebytes. By itself, Malwarebytes does a pretty solid job of cleaning up serious malware infections and it is smart enough to parse the registry and remove the bad add/remove program options. Before you fire back with "BUT IT COULDVE COME WITH OTHER MALWARE!!!!!!!!!!!": Let's assume the OP has an active malware infection and we have no idea what the scale of the infection is. From experience, I can deduce Malwarebytes can detect/clean about 95% of infections because it doesn't fair well with rootkits. I kick the scan off. It comes back and detects/cleans what it found. I reboot. I kick off Combofix. Let's say Combofix also has the ability to detect 95% of malware. However, you have to remember MB has already scanned and cleaned the machine, so the odds of infection are decreasing exponentially with each subsequent scan. But since no scanner has a detection rate of 100%, one can NEVER guarantee that a machine is clean. After the first one or two scans, you are more or less just WASTING TIME. The overlap in the detection capability between scanners will rapidly approach 99% and you will theoretically never reach 100%. So, to recap, the only way to guarantee a clean machine is to wipe the bastard. The OP indicated that he had a single toolbar infection and you recommended he run 8 tools and then reset his browsers. Complete. Overkill. To steal your words: Get off your high horse.

You don't NEED to run all scans. If Malwarebytes cleans it up, fine. If it doesn't, then he could continue running the 900 other things you suggested.

I'm guessing the drive is faulty of the disk is full.

Did you try the instructions in my previous post?

Try running the following command in an elavated command prompt Dism /Online /Cleanup-Image /RestoreHealth

if you download and run malwarebytes, it'll probably take care of it.

first hit on google seemed like it might be worth trying: http://www.eightforums.com/performance-maintenance/44709-windows-host-process-rundll32-high-cpu-usage-2.html

The 290x may also be getting too hot. They throttle themselves when that happens.

I ran 2x 120GB Vertex 3's in a RAID0 and I noticed no difference in performance between a single 120GB SSD and the striped array. I'm with the other guy. Just buy a bigger single drive. The only way you'd EVER see a real-world performance boost by RAID0'ing ssd's if if you were doing file copies from one RAID0-SSD array to another. No "real world" boost, though.

Going to go against the grain with everyone else and disagree with the CPU bottleneck. Wipe with DDU and reinstall the drivers http://www.wagnardmobile.com/DDU/

I ran into this issue with a machine at work on Windows 8. I troubleshot it all day and eventually some random combination of stuff fixed it. Try running the Windows Update troubleshooter here: http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows7/open-the-windows-update-troubleshooter and then try the 3.5 install again

actually, according to the spec sheets on your ram, it's designed to run 1.425v-1.575. http://www.kingston.com/datasheets/KHX1600C9D3K3_6GX.pdf http://www.kingston.com/datasheets/KHX1600C9D3B1K2_8GX.pdf I'm guessing you killed it by running it overvolted all this time.

In my experience, your behavior is most often observed when the BIOS Is trying to initialize external devices. USB devices can cause it and they're easiest to test. Keyboard and mice should be OK, but external hard drives might cause that delay. Also, devices that are plugged in but do not have power will take forever to initialize/timeout. Make sure you secured power connectors to all of your HDD's/SSD's/CD-ROMS etc. Bonus tip: You can hit 'escape' at that ASUS screen and it should give you the diagnostic screen that should hopefully give you a good idea of where it's hanging at.

The Samsung Magician software contains a firmware patcher. I'm with Lotus, make sure the firmware is up to date. It also could be a damaged file system. Start -> Run -> chkdsk /f It'll probably ask if you want to run the checkdisk on next startup. Say yes, and reboot.

I know it was already asked, but are you absolutely sure there are crossfire profiles and that they're setup properly? Everything you've described sounds like it's missing a profile. Perhaps the game you're trying to play would help?

Try different GPU drivers, then.

This thread is going in the wrong direction. It's not fragmentation of the disk. I'm leaning towards drivers. Since you mentioned your GPU, have you made sure your drivers are up to date? If so, have you tried older drivers? Has this issue always been there or did it just happen recently? If it happened recently, try a system restore.

Zotac, more like Brotac...right guys? Guys...?

This isn't new and it's been around for years

I've had a NFC-capable phone and have had Google Wallet installed for years and have only used it a handful of times. I've tried it at a few gas stations (at the pump) and had a miserable success rate (about 30%). I've used it at Meijer and Tim Horton's and it worked upwards of 70% of the time. The thing that makes me not use it is: 1) It encourages people to talk to me and ask about how it works (which I hate, because talking to people sucks) 2) It doesn't work 100% of the time like my card does

yes, but it still relies a lot on whatever application you're throwing at it. Something might require a lot of disk I/O and something else might tax 1 CPU core and neglect other cores. OP is seeking a simple answer to a complex question with hundreds of thousands of variables.

A bottleneck exists in every system. Where the bottleneck is depends on the components of the entire build and what exactly you're using the machine for.