Desktop computer help

[The Ruptured Duck]

My families desktop computer is acting up.  Basically it is so slow, it is unusable in normal mode.  This comes after the motherboard crapped out a few months ago and we brought it to one of our computer savvy friends to look at it.  He said he replaced the motherboard and added RAM.  The computer worked great for about two weeks, when it started doing this.  I am now running it in safe mode and trying to back up the hard drive on an external drive, but I think the software won't install while its in safe mode.

Any help or advice?

[The Ruptured Duck]

Oh, and its a 2001 gateway if that helps at all.

[ozzy72]

Probably a conflict between the system and Windows, and you can try either a repair or re-install. Did you re-install Windows after changing the MOBO?

[The Ruptured Duck]

Probably a conflict between the system and Windows, and you can try either a repair or re-install. Did you re-install Windows after changing the MOBO?

I don't think so.  One of our friends installed the motherboard.  Would that empty the hard drive?  If so then it wasn't re-installed.

[ozzy72]

No it wouldn't, only reformatting the drive will empty it (sort of).
Okay what you need to do is try a repair as the original install of Windows will be configured to your old motherboard and this is probably the problem.
So go into Start and click on Run, then type in the following sfc /scannow and it'll scan the system for missing or incorrect files. This should address some of the problems, then all you need to do is do a search for new hardware to make sure that the machine is recognising the new MOBO and if it says there are 2 then delete the old one from the Hardware list