Poor performance (hard drive?)

[Guest]

Archived from groups: microsoft.public.windowsxp.general (More info?)

I have a PC set up as follows:

AMD 2500+ running stable as a 3000+
Abit AN7 Nforce2 mobo
1gb DDR333 Dual channel RAM
1 x seagate 160gb IDE HD 2mb cache
1 x samsung 120gb IDE HD 8mb cache
1 x Liteon 16x DVD-RW
ATI Radeon 9800PRO

Everything was running fine, I formatted the drives, installed XP on a
partition on the Seagate HD and had no problems. I got the CPU into a rock
stable and cool state and the machine was performing very well. after a
while I realised my primary hard drive partition was becoming a little
fragmented so i ran defrag. Since then, performance has been poor. It takes
much longer to run programs. Counterstrike Source in particular now takes a
lot longer when it changes levels. There is also often a noticeable lag when
opening smaller programs and utilities. Apart from that the system is fine,
Norton AV isn't picking up anything odd and MS Antispyware reports no
problems.

Anyone got any ideas of what might be wrong?

 

[Jon]

Archived from groups: microsoft.public.windowsxp.general (More info?)

Try running chkdsk

Right-click on drive in "My Computer" > Properties > Tools > Check Now
Check both options and schedule for the reboot.
( Then find something else to do for a couple of hours )

Jon


"Speedbird1982" <Speedbird1982@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:1B421063-17A7-4553-A2E8-5A0935D56D33@microsoft.com...
>I have a PC set up as follows:
>
> AMD 2500+ running stable as a 3000+
> Abit AN7 Nforce2 mobo
> 1gb DDR333 Dual channel RAM
> 1 x seagate 160gb IDE HD 2mb cache
> 1 x samsung 120gb IDE HD 8mb cache
> 1 x Liteon 16x DVD-RW
> ATI Radeon 9800PRO
>
> Everything was running fine, I formatted the drives, installed XP on a
> partition on the Seagate HD and had no problems. I got the CPU into a
> rock
> stable and cool state and the machine was performing very well. after a
> while I realised my primary hard drive partition was becoming a little
> fragmented so i ran defrag. Since then, performance has been poor. It
> takes
> much longer to run programs. Counterstrike Source in particular now takes
> a
> lot longer when it changes levels. There is also often a noticeable lag
> when
> opening smaller programs and utilities. Apart from that the system is
> fine,
> Norton AV isn't picking up anything odd and MS Antispyware reports no
> problems.
>
> Anyone got any ideas of what might be wrong?

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: microsoft.public.windowsxp.general (More info?)

On Sun, 12 Jun 2005 19:33:01 -0700, "Speedbird1982"

>I have a PC set up as follows:

>AMD 2500+ running stable as a 3000+

Try not overclocking it, duh ;-)
....especially during hairy stuff like installs and defrags.
....especially if RAM, AGP, PCI and xIDE are overclocked too

>Abit AN7 Nforce2 mobo
>1gb DDR333 Dual channel RAM
>1 x seagate 160gb IDE HD 2mb cache
>1 x samsung 120gb IDE HD 8mb cache
>1 x Liteon 16x DVD-RW
>ATI Radeon 9800PRO

>Everything was running fine, I formatted the drives, installed XP on a
>partition on the Seagate HD and had no problems. I got the CPU into a rock
>stable and cool state and the machine was performing very well. after a
>while I realised my primary hard drive partition was becoming a little
>fragmented so i ran defrag. Since then, performance has been poor. It takes
>much longer to run programs. Counterstrike Source in particular now takes a
>lot longer when it changes levels. There is also often a noticeable lag when
>opening smaller programs and utilities.

My guess is that your overclocked xIDE has thrown enough errors for
the OS to retreat into a safer but slower xIDE mode, e.g. from UIDE100
to PIO. Using an 80-pin xIDE data cable to the HDs?

If it's not that, then it could be adverse file positioning by defrag,
such as a pagefile split into chunks dotted across the volume. The
best way to reduce the impact of poor defrag logic is to keep most
traffic within a small C:, and moving less-often-used bloatware (say,
a 100G collection of MP3s, pics, movies and games) off C:

Finally, it could be active malware, though that's less likely to
start midway through a defrag unless you're broadbanding with no NAT
router, firewall, and am running unpatched XP Gold or XP SP1.

>Norton AV isn't picking up anything odd

<shrug>

You can't seriously expect an av that is based *in* the infected OS to
detect and manage malware that it's already missed and allowed to go
active? The most likely way Norton would tell you you're infected, is
by failing to work, or failure to update itself.



>------------------------ ---- --- -- - - - -
Forget http://cquirke.blogspot.com and check out a
better one at http://topicdrift.blogspot.com instead!
>------------------------ ---- --- -- - - - -

 

[frodo]

Archived from groups: microsoft.public.windowsxp.general (More info?)

I'd suspect that the HD has reverted to a slower DMA or PIO mode. Check
it in Dev Manager, properties page for the drive. Should be set to "DMA
if available" and it should have choosen UDMA-Mode 5 (or 6 is even
better).

Do you have the nForce IDE Drivers, or the baseline XP drivers. [Since it
"used to work" it's not your problem, but the nForce drivers are optimized
for the nforce chipset].

Have you unintenitonally disabled the "boot time optimize background
defrag", either by turning it off w/ TweakUI or Cacheman, or disabling the
Task Scheduler service? Check the \windows\prefetch folder, sorted by
date. There should be recent .pf files in there, and layout.ini should
not be more than a few days old. If they are then the periodic optimize
defrag is not running. force it manually via these command lines:

%windir%\system32\rundll32.exe advapi32.dll,ProcessIdleTasks

defrag c: /b [assumes c drive]

The first command causes the layout.ini to be updated (amoungst other
things); it should take about 15 seconds, watch the HD light. It will
then ALSO trigger the second line automatically IF you haven't disabled it
via the reg; if you have then force the "boot" defrag manually by issuing
the second command; this takes approx 1 minute more, watch the HD light.

reboot and it should boot and launch frequently used apps more quickly.

Note that running a regular defrag undoes the optimize defrag, which may
be your situation. The optimize defrag is supposed to run every few days,
in the background, if you let the machine idle. If you are the type that
turns on the pc, works for a while, and then turns it off, then the
optimize defrag never gets a chance to run (nor do any system restore
checkpoints get made). To force this periodic "idle processing" to take
place use the first command above.