Computer running poorly after format

[MurdarMachene]

After a recent reformat, I decided to put windows XP on a seperate hard drive in case I should ever have to reformat again.

Windows XP is on C:, the 34 gig WD 10k rpm raptor.

My games, roms, movies, files, etc. are on D:. I run games from D.

Ever since my reformat, I have noticed many things running way worse than before.

Ati tool, for example, used to idle at 290 FPS. Now it gets 190 MAX.

CS:S video stress test used to get 153 fps. It now gets 130.

My boot up takes LITERALLY EIGHT TIMES AS LONG as it used to take. The loading blue bar that scrolls from left to right on the black background that says "Windows XP" before windows is loaded but after all bios stuff is in used to just load HALF a bar, now it goes across FOUR times. This is unacceptable.

Is the 34 Gig WD failing?

The other drive that used to boot faster is a Western digi 74 gig SATA raptor 10k rpm.

Does my motherboard (Asus k8n-e deluxe) have one SATA slot that is faster than the other? Is the 34 gig possibly plugged into the slow slot, and the 74 gig in the "fast" slot?

Help me, please. Ideas, tweaks, anything to get my computer back to working order.

IF all else fails I can reformat and just put all my stuff including windows on the 74 gig, which will assuredly run fine. However, if possible I would like to solve the problem and keep things as they are.

Thanks for your time.

 

[PurdueRy]

Chipset drivers?

Video drivers?

Soundcard drivers?(pretty unlikely)

BIOS update?(highly unlikely)

If your answer is whoops to any of these...that might be your problem...

 

[MurdarMachene]

Should I re-flash my bios with Asus Update? I will try that and tell if it makes a difference.

For sure the newest Nforce 3 platform drivers are installed. Just today, got the 5.9 cats for ATI card (x800). Soundcard, ac 97, got that installed.

 

[PurdueRy]

It can't hurt I suppose, I always do it just to avoid any compatibility problems in the future, some people don't like to though.

Did you change your settings so that you are not forcing 2xAA or AF of any kind? Thats an easy thing to forget.

SATA is all the same speed(there is SATA II and such but they won't mix that on the board). Make sure that your FSB and multiplier are running at the correct frequency. Check out your ram bus settings. Report all this back.

 

[PurdueRy]

BTW hard drive speed matters very little in games. Those symptoms really don't match a HD failure. You can use the WD utilities to check them if you still believe they might be going bad...but I doubt it

 

[MurdarMachene]

My ram is set to 2-2-5, 1T, 400 mhz. I have 1 gig of PC3200 OCZ Platinum Revision 2. My FSB and multiplier are the same as always, they're on the default 11 multiplier and 200, which should be an 800 mhz FSB and 2.2 gig CPU, which it's all set to.

Edit: I forgot to mention I flashed the bios. no changes yet. Also, no FSAA or antiscrappy filter.

 

[PurdueRy]

benchmark it with aquamark/3dmark

 

[ElTorrente]

What does "Device Manager" look like? Any explanation marks or question marks?

 

[MurdarMachene]

For some reason my bios won't let me clock my ram past 333mhz. That's odd because I used to be able to have it at 400mhz just before the flash now. Crap. Any way around this?

Device manager looks fine to me, no ! or ?.

 

[PurdueRy]

make sure its not 333x2 or something. Sometimes they specify it that way. The correct setting might be 200

 

[MurdarMachene]

It was 100mhz x2...is that right? It seems slow...I literally cannot put it to 200 x 2 anymore. Isn't that messed up? It's supposed to be 400mhz, 200mhz X 2. But now the max I can do is 166X2...that bios flash screwed me.

 

[MurdarMachene]

Oh yeah, it said "Bad Checksum" when I flashed my bios. This is probably bad. Does anyone know of a better site than asus' own to get the Asus K8n-e deluxe BIOS files?

 

[PurdueRy]

Did you use the auto-update or did you get it directly?

Secondly, it should say bad checksum, that isn't bad

 

[MurdarMachene]

I used the auto update one, got the problem, so I downloaded the file off ASUS, still can't clock it to 400mhz. The highest I can get it is 166x2...that's low for my ram, right? I thought I was supposed to have this ram at 400mhz, meaning 200x2.

Should I flash to an earlier bios, like 1007?

 

[PurdueRy]

that is really weird, ya I guess I would flash it back....

 

[MurdarMachene]

well, I can't flash it back. it says I have to use AFUDOS or ASUSDOS or some crpa, but I don't have a floppy drive or a CD burner so i cannot make a bootable disk and I cannot boot to a floppy. Am I screwed or what?

Can I perhaps take out the cmos battery and have it default to whatevre the default thing is on there?

 

[MurdarMachene]

IDEA, could I use the windows XP recovery console as a sort of fake dos to use ASUSDOS from there?

 

[birdpup]

Originally posted by: PurdueRy
Chipset drivers?

Video drivers?

Soundcard drivers?(pretty unlikely)

BIOS update?(highly unlikely)

If your answer is whoops to any of these...that might be your problem...

Returning to the original recommendation. Were the chipset drivers the first set of drivers that were installed after the initial windows installation? This is important because Windows SP2 or Windows Update could possibly load Microsoft drivers for the motherboard chipset components and these generic, Microsoft provided drivers may not be as good as the Asus provided drivers.

As far as I know, Asus's own driver download site is the best place to obtain Asus drivers.

 

[MurdarMachene]

I flashed back to the old 1006 bios and my ram is fine now.

I always make sure to install all my system crap before my windows updates.

I'm just gonna reformat.