Last night I just put together a new media center computer. It has a 64 bit processor and 1gb of RAM, running XP Pro. The only thing that wasn't brand new was the hard drive. For some reason, the computer seems to be running slow and programs keep locking up. Has anyone had this problem before? Could it possibly be the old hard drive?

It's one possibility. The speed of the hard drive (measured by the RPM) may be creating a processing bottleneck. Depending on your processor, you'd probably want something around 10,500 RPM (I think that's what my two drives are...I really should look that up sometime.)

The other possibility is that you're running XP Pro instead of XP 64-bit edition. If you're running a 64-bit processor, 64-bit edition makes much better use of resources than its 32-bit counterpart.

The catch is that some things (e.g. AVG Free) aren't available for the 64-bit edition of Windows, although many of those issues should be corrected with Vista (I hope, although I only have one issue in terms of software that way.)

Alright well I just noticed that when I view my task manager, the CPU will just go up to 100% usage when I'm not even running anything special

And... other than that, I'm trying to run BitComet and it keeps locking up and has (Not Responding), but the CPU process and RAM process is below like 5%

all i can say is computers are funny buggers.
you have choices, spend 1000's (and yes i am serious 1000's) on the best computer money can buy and it will be fast enought o run all programs avalible, get the lastest everytihng....
and then have the hassel of getting it all working which when its done it fine it just the first 3months thats hell...

or...

become amish.

Dan

(anothe completely usuless post if u laughed [hardly i know] talkupation would be nice )
Dan