New machine install, terribly slow response

Question

I'm hoping someone can shed some light here, I've recently built a new NLE for CS5.5 and the thing's incredibly slow to load, encode or even respond to an export command.
A few specs on the new machine:
Dual Xeon 3.47GHz 6 core CPU's, 12 cores total, 24 logical cores total
Supermicro X8DTL motherboard, intel 5500 chipset
24GB registered RAM in triple channel mode
Win7 Pro 64 bit with all updates
Matrox MXO2 LE capture/playback
Nvidia GTX 580 4GB video card
Intel LSI MegaRaid SATA raid controller
7TB RAID 5 array on the RAID card
Installed software consists of PPro CS 5.5 suite, Avira anti virus and Firefox web browser.  Beyond that it's a clean install
Now for my problems.
Premiere generally takes about 2 minutes to load from the desktop and is slow to respond after that.  I've loaded a 40 second HD timeline consisting of 2 XDCAM HD video clips and one stereo music track.  When I export this simple timeline it takes 3 minutes for the encode options to pop up, then once I select BluRay HD for the preset and queue it takes another 3 minutes before Media Encoder launches.  At the time I'm writing this Media Encoder has been encoding for 30 minutes and it's only about 50% done with that 40 second timeline.  For comparison my old dual core laptop with it's single internal drive takes about 30 seconds to launch Premiere (CS4 in it's case) and it encodes the same timeline in about 4 minutes.
Something's very wrong here; I'm hoping it's something simple like a wrong setting.  The computer itself seems to work fine and the Windows index benchmarks at 7.8 outside of a slower C drive coming in at 6.  All the project material is on the RAID and the programs and OS are on the C drive.  Anyone have any thoughts?  I'm going to have to get started on a major project shortly and I can't imagine doing it on this machine as it is.
Scott Cooper
Seehorse Video

Answer 1

Disconnecting from my LAN would be problematic in that several machines have files shared with the editor and vice versa... Lightwave for example is on a separate machine and most of my Photoshop stuff is on a third.  All machines are clean and checked daily for infection... at about 3AM so it doesn't try while I'm working.  If I suspect something I'll run Malwarebytes (in manual mode).  So far in the last 10 years I've only had one virus get through on my personal machine and nothing has hit any of the business ones.
I do have a hardware firewall on the LAN and I don't let Avira AV scan files while I'm editing.  I've used Avira free on my last 2 systems without any issues (one Avid Liquid and the other Premiere CS2).  I certainly wouldn't trust Norton or McAffee to walk the dog, let alone protect a machine... too much bloatware.
Jeff, I'm not totally sure what issues I still have; I'll find out this week as I get started on a project though.  (Fortunately no clients present so I've time to work out any lingering bugs... if I had to do it in front of clients I'd probably use the old machine.)  I did notice that disabling the SurCode solved the load issue anyway... my project with roughly 200 hours of XDCAM footage in several Bins loads in ~45 seconds or so.  Of course there's nothing yet on the timeline; that will probably slow things down some.  Oh, I'm not using any of the "max bit depth" settings and wasn't at the time I rendered out those bluray disks.  Maybe it's my imagination on the slowdown (once things actually opened) but it did take more than real time to encode a 45 minute bluray disk.  This was before I disabled the SurCode; hopefully that solved the issue.  Bottom line is that the system seems to function now, I'll know if anything else is out of whack as I actually start using the machine.
On RAID I simply do not trust RAID 0 for anything; I've lost days of work before due to a failure on a RAID 0 setup so I always use RAID 5 for safety.  I assumed that the Intel card would work as I've used an earlier model in my old Avid Liquid system with no problem and it was faster than an E-Sata external.  With 5 - 2TB drives for storage the odds of a RAID 0 failure don't seem appealing.