Win XP Pro CRAWLING after Monitor switch?

Folks
this makes no sense to me. I changed the LCD monitor on a compaq sys with Win XP Pro up-to-date. Removed GEM 15" LCD, installed Norcent widescreen 16:9 19". Neither has a proper driver peculiar to its properties: they use Win "plug & pray". Before the switch system was very quick and responsive. After switch, boot takes FOREVER and response is very delay-ish. I ran WinASO registry optimizer, found a few errors, fixed, still the same. Ran msconfig and hunted a few transient startup items to turn off. System is still about the same. I am using the resolution the mon mftr recommends, but at lower color depth to spare performance. I don't know what else to do.

???????????

 

Did you check to see if your new monitor was compatible with XP Pro?

http://testedproducts.windowsmarketplace.com/

 

Unless your video card is a dinosaur, no noticeable performance gains come from lowering color depth.

What video card do you have, and what color depth, resolution, and refresh rate are you using?

Are you certain that hardware acceleration is not disabled?

 

not certain about hdwe accel, I thought the nvda control software overrode everything?? Anyway, currently I'm using 16-bits, 1440 x 900, large fonts. "normal" fonts don't look right at this resolution [the rez is what's recommended for any 16:9 screen, to my knowledge]

Card is a GeForce FX5200. Is this a clue? the monitor shows up in Device Mgr as generic "Plug & Play", but in the properties, the "Device Instance" string shows up with the correct ID, Norcent 1902. ?? do I need to manually reinstall the monitor in Win XP and look for this specific one?

 

Monitor drivers in Xp merely are for setting refresh rate limits, and color profiles. They are not true drivers.

Check Safe Mode, and see if everything is still crawling?

 

I'd also move the monitor resolution to 800x600@32 bit color.

It will be ugly as hell, but does performance increase at all?

 

Let me ask this: does switching the source from Analog to Digital/DVI affect the fonts? other things being equal?
Like right now typing in this screen on majorgeeks, everything looks pretty normal, fontwise, but when I go look at my Win Explorer tree, folders, filenames, the fonts are razor-thin and fadey-looking. that's with the same settings as before: max resolution, 60hz (only refresh supported), large fonts .... not custom, just default large, 32-bit color

I'm beginning to think the slowness is not video-related.... coincidental timing. I have no malware to speak of, i've cleaned up the registry and defrag'd it, I've CCleaned all the crud out, but something causes it to take a long, long, long time to boot and load XP. I've pared down the startup items to just what I need and see no odd processes running. I have 1.5GB RAM.... Video is set to full hardware acceleration, single-monitor, .....????

 

DVI will look slightly crisper. Try turning on cleartype, and see if it helps outside of your browser.