Very, Very Slow Database - Mystified

We just installed SQL Server version 800.194 on a dual processor
server equipped with a gigabyte of RAM, running Windows 2000 Server
operating system. We set up a few databases with (so far) very tiny
tables.

When I am working locally (i.e. on the server itself) with Query
Analyzer, even the simplest operation is incredibly slow. If I bring
up Windows Task Manager looking at the Processes pane (Query Analyzer
shows up as "isqlw.exe"), and use "View/Select Columns..." to choose
"I/O Writes" and "I/O Write Bytes", then I observe that doing a
select* on a table with a single row results in over 500 "I/O Writes"
and 170,000 "I/O Write Bytes" of data written. It requires 15 seconds
to return the single row of information.

Even clicking on the Change Database Listbox results in hundreds of
write operations!

However, when I am working remotely with Query Analyzer, the select*
works perfectly normally. Neither "I/O Writes" nor "I/O Write Bytes"
are recorded.

I figure maybe there is some sort of security logging turned on that
records everything you do...

Whatever is going on here, how do you turn it off?

Tom