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One of my Windows XP laptop become extremely slow today. It happened after I let it on overnight to download a big file.

Here are the symptoms:
1. The boot up sequence take extra long to complete, from pressing the on switch until I can move the cursor, it takes more than 5 minutes.
2. After logging into Windows XP, it takes another 3 minutes before I can click on the Start button.
3. All the sound become funny, a one second sound will be dragged to become a 3 second sound with metal like effect.


After spending some time, I finally detected the source of the problem. Here are steps to fix it up:
1. Open Control Panel -> System
2. Go to Hardware tab, go into Device Manager
3. Expand the IDE. All the controllers driver has been duplicated.
4. Delete all the duplicated items.
5. Restart, and the laptop become ultra smooth and responsive again.

Hope these steps might help if you face the same problem.