Win7 32 or 64-bit?

[Animeniax]

clean the HDD then.

I wonder why you need 2 hours, I remember the installations I did being a lot quicker.

Maybe you could try installing from a usb drive, which is a lot quicker/quieter... the only catch is that you might need some time to learn how to do it

I admitt I never had to install from the DVD, because I can't stand the slow speed and noises and Win7 allows for install from other means.

Do you mean physically or logically? Because with the clean install of the 32-bit version, I wiped the partitions and created a new one and formatted the partition.

2 hours from start to finish, including all updates, antivirus, utilities, configurations, Starcraft II, and Battlefield BC2.

[David75]

From a clean HDD to first available desktop, I remember I needed around 20 minutes for an install from a usb HDD or uncompressed iso directly placed in the HDD. Yup I tried many things

But yes, other software install can be slow.

By clean, yup, partition/formating.

I would even have win7 to recreate the partition table, because of partition alignment.
I do not think it's possible your second install messed with that, because it means changing the partitions. If the install wasn't clean, I guess the main problem is thatthe registry is messed up. But hard to tell.

I just hope these 2 hours will prove beneficial.

Oh, I do not know about the budget, but you could see for a Vertex 2 or C300 SSD.
It will not improve your gaming performances, but will clearly make a difference in the way your computer reacts and feels snapier. I will probably upgrade in september or october, since prices have fallen a little.

[Animeniax]

It seems to be running a little quicker now, though boot times are not impressive. I might go SSD for that, but I doubt it. I think it'd be better to get a new WD Raptor 150 since the previous one is already 1.5 years old and might be slowing down due to age.

I might do a complete clean install this weekend to remove the possibility that the upgrade from 32-bit to 64-bit is causing problems.

I'm not too far off the 20 minute mark from clean HDD to Windows desktop. I think I'm around 22-25 minutes but I haven't really kept track. I prefer to count from start to completed setup (including all drivers, restoring bookmarks in Firefox, updated antivirus, all Windows updates, and the game I'm currently playing) which comes to around 2 hours.