WD SE 80Gb was good - now slow and weird....

jy88888888

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Hi,

THE PROBLEM - slow hard drive performance (I think it's the hard drive anyway). Files appear after a delay when browsing folders in Windows Explorer. It happens after I play a couple of mp3s - I have about 550 mp3s in many subfolders in the main folder "My Music".

MY SPEC

AMD 1700+
Gigabyte GA-7VTXE
WD SE 80Gb
256 DDR Memory
Geforce 3 Ti200
Win 98 SE
Using Winamp 3
Windows manages virtual memory
Computer is networked to another using a single crossover cable

I haven't experienced this problem before and the WD SE did work well and fast for quite a while but now it is just annoying - I'd describe it as being easily fragmented but I do defragment regularly.

Please help!

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dhlucke

Polypheme
I haven't quite figured this one out either. I have roughly 10,000 MP3's in many subfolders, but it pretty much only slows that folder down.

I just did a fresh install of windows though and it's running really nice now. I'm installing all the critical updates and some basic programs and hopefully I'll spot the problem. I thought it might be the indexing feature in XP, but I don't think that's it. Definitely not in your case. I thought it might be the thumbnail file, but I don't think that's it either.

How beat up is your windows installation? A regular defrag did wonders. In my opinion what was slowing me down wasn't so much that MP3 folder but was the filesharing. Any chance that you're file sharing?

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Woodman

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I experienced something similar a couple weeks ago too. Turns out, I was infected with some kind of virus that attaches itself to HTML files. All of my folders were affected unfortunatly.

This made small folders open somewhat normally, but larger ones had this annoying "delay", that puzzled me for a while.


You're probably not infected, but if you have the files "desktop.ini" & "folder.htt" in every folder & subfolder, you might just be infected, thus causing the slowdown. If the file "folder.htt" appears in your folders, open it using Notepad & scroll down towards near the end, & check to see if there's a lot of random looking characters in one big paragraph. This also appears in all other HTML files you might have on your drive.
 

dhlucke

Polypheme
I have 16 desktop.ini files. A couple of them are html. What are they for and what happens if you delete them?

I have no folder.htt files.

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Woodman

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I think they're fine & harmless, considering there's only a couple of them on your system. The problem mainly lies with "folder.htt" if you're infected, these & the "desktop.ini" files appearing in pretty much all your directories & subdirectories is a sign of something bad :).

What the virus does is add an additional piece of script at the end of the file, if you edit the folder.htt file, you should be able to see it.

I used a free virus scanner to detect this, can't remember which one though. I also used it to clean most of the files on my system, however several hundred files were uncleanable, so I had to manually edit each & every one of them to clear the infection, ack. I also had to edit my registries, delete several virus core-files, remove my email sig (since it attaches itself to every email I send), & finally delete all my "rb0" files (basically files that were renamed by the virus cleaner). Was both fun, & unpleasent at the same time heh.
 

jy88888888

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Thanks - I have also just fresh installed Win 98 SE but it still happens. I don't think it's a virus because I think I'm right in saying that all viruses are deleted in the formatting.....

I don't file share and seeing as though I've just did a fresh install, my computer is pretty much minimalistic in terms of software installed.

I can't seem to figure it out - It must be something I've installed that I didn't install when the WD worked fine - But I don't know what it is!

Weird thing is, the computer networked to mine is working fine. It's spec is

XP2200
Maxtor Diamondmax Plus D740X
Asus A7V333
256 DDR

Any chance it's a problem with the rest of my hardware?

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jy88888888

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The only thing I can think of is the problem started when I had my computer connected to my university accommodation network of computers. Now that's it's the summer, I've had my computer connected to my brother's computer.

It worked fine for awhile when it was connected to the network though so it probably isnt network related...

I haven't tried it but do you think I should disconnect it and take out the network card too?

AMD VS INTEL - AMD anyday<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by jy88888888 on 07/16/03 08:52 AM.</EM></FONT></P>
 

sparky853

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when you reinstalled the OS, did you do a Zero-Fill format, or just a standard format? If it is a virus, its possible it wasn't deleted when you formatted.

also, try a better defrag program such as diskeeper, it does a much better job than the one included with windows.

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sparky853

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you should be able to download a utility from WD that allows you to do a Zero-Fill Format. Basically, it writes a series of zeros to the whole drive surface, totally erasing what was there.

It works better than a normal format, and will delete any boot sector viruses.

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blah

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Get viro bootto bisko and boot into DOS with it (Mcafe haz one) if you have boot vires, any low format will do nothing. You'll have to recreate partitions, which means, copy yer files into diffirent drive, do the job, then get them back with viro check. Slow drive is a viro thing, nothing else.

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confoundicator

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I just use FDisk in DOS. Works for me.

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jy88888888

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hmmm...you sure this will work? What if it's not a virus? Are there any Windows tweaks - I've heard about something whereby you place the swapfile on a seperate partition or something along those lines....

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dhlucke

Polypheme
Double check that you're using a ATA 66/100/133 cable and not a ATA 33 cable. For all I know you moved something around at one point and overlooked this.

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DOOM

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> If it is a virus, its possible it wasn't deleted when you formatted.

A virus can't recover itself after a format. It would take intervention from the user or another program to do that. In other words, you would have to explicitly try to recover it or get infected by another virus.



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blah

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ATA33 is as fast as any other above in PC. No doubd about that, seeing with my own eyes (the only diffirense you'll see is in banchmarks and those can not be seeing by the naked eye, at least mine;)

The only thing that can be wrong with the cable is that 66 (and above) are to go bad often, that might be the case. That is why I am still using 33, no performance loss at no trouble expance.

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dhlucke

Polypheme
When I installed my 2000JB it was as slow as a dog. I had the 1200JB on a ATA100 cable and the new drive on an older cable by mistake. It was a major difference. When I got both drives on an ATA100 cable performance increased dramatically.

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blah

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Good for you, you are the lucki one (and probabli veri happi and proud that your JBs are doing well on 100 only), my IBMs are blazin fast on all connectorz.

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dhlucke

Polypheme
The old cables are thicker, less wires taking up the same cable. The new cables have very thin wires going through it.

Yeah, ATA 66/100/133 all use the same cable.

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dhlucke

Polypheme
You'll notice if something is wrong in the device manager or the bios startup screen if the DMA is too low.

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jy88888888

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The cables are OK. I've noticed my bootup time is longer when my PC is connected to a network - is this related to my problem in anyway...

Thanks for all help so far

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svol

Champion
Not necesarally, if you're connected to a LAN the PC searches the LAN for PCs and if set so for DNS, DHCP and WINS (and other) servers/sources... which ofcourse takes time.

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