Massive Computer Slowdown

Ok this is what happened: About a year ago I bought a radeon 9800 pro 256mb. After receiving the card I read a little label that says required 300 watt power supply. After reading that I went on my quest to figure out what size my power supply was. I called IBM support and they convinced me the stock power supply (which can no be interchanged because of size) would be good enough due to the fact that nothing else on the computer was using much power. Turned out the power supply was 185 watts. So I put in the graphics card. Took out the old. Turned on the computer and it booted fine. Installed the graphics drivers. Rebooted. Then bam windows system 32 files corrupted all sorts of crap. So after going through computer hell for about a week I managed to get rid of all the errors by running chkdsk and all sorts of other crap. I put back in the old graphics card and reinstalled the drivers I uninstalled before putting the new graphics card in. It works but its now about half as fast. I took the radeon and put it in my newer computer which has a 235 watt power supply and it worked fine (actually its a pretty damn good computer now). And thats the story to this day. Any idea whats wrong? I have thought of formatting the computer and trying it new but after searching I realized the computer did not come with a windows XP copy due to the fact my dad works for IBM and bought it off the employee thing which has some old computers for cheap and new computers with a discount. Dont ask me why it didnt come with a copy of xp.

 

If that comp is licensed to use windows,there may be the windows code stuck on it somewhere if so you can use anyones disk as long as you use that code,if it was volume licensed you can still use the code it has and is lurking in the registry,I could pretent I'm an expert in altering the registry,but I aint heres the link

http://www.cyberwalker.net/quicktips/find-windows-product-key.html

wright it down,then borrow a copy off someone,you cannot mix home and pro either

 

wow thanks a lot. Ive been looking for a resolution to this problem for a while and never thought about posting it here. Ill get around to doing that sometime when I cant stand how slow that computer is anymore.

 

Are you confusing Product ID with the Activation key?

For the actual Activation Key found on the little sticker on any new cd, you can use a program like:

Winkey finder:
http://www.majorgeeks.com/download.php?det=4501

to find it.

If you are not confusing the two, then just ignore me!