URGENT Steam games lag/crash HELP PLEASE

[DC9884]

One of my HD's was recently fried by a lightning storm, so i had to reinstall windows xp on a new drive that i bought, however I found my old secondary HD, with steam on it, to be fine, so i left it alone. I updated XP (including sp2) and got all the latest drivers (catalyst 4.10), and now i lag horribly in all my steam games, and on occasion the computer crashes to a non respondent black screen and sometimes restarts on its own. Before all this i got about a constant 120 fps in CS 1.6, now i get 80 max when alone and around ten with other people and gunfights on the screen. This is in D3D, in openGL, im at 30 alone and about 5 with people. This doesnt change no matter what my resolution. My ping is usally around 40 or so. (DSL). For comparison i get a solid 45 fps in doom3 on medium 800x600.

Windows XP 2002 build 5.1 (2600) w/ SP1 and 2 and .Net1.1
nforce A7N266-E
Athalon XP 1800+ ~1.5 ghz
Soundblaster Live 5.1
Radeon 9700 PRO catalyst 4.10 w/ AI and CCC
DirectX 9.0c
512mb DDR Ram
130 Gb Deskstar 7200rpm (w/ windows)
80 Gb Western Digital 7200rpm (w/ steam)

Any suggestions appreciated.

 

[Kirkburn]

I reckon it wasn't just the hard-drive that's got a little frying ... have you tried running HD intensive things from Steam HD? Is it slow when loading levels? If it crashes during those things, but not with the other (new) HD, then the HD is probably buggered.
When you say lag do you actually mean lag, since you say your ping is about 40 (i.e. is it constant?)

 

[DC9884]

its a pretty contant ping yes. I have XSI on that drive...could that be a could test? I just drop into the under ten FPS zone. but when im there my ping is still around 40, so i dont think its my internet. Also, while playing steam, my computer sometimes randomly restarts and when it boots again windows say its a device driver error but cant tell what driver (thanks windows). Could it be catalyst 4.10?