Computer speed-up trick

[iolewis]

I service PC?s for a living and I?m frequently asked to fix a computer that is running very slowly. After removing the usual culprits with various anti-malware programs, running MSCONFIG, cleaning the registry, defragmenting the hard drive and many other standard speed-up processes, the computer is usually back to its full potential. However, on occasions, I encounter a computer where this only partially helps. Further investigation shows that the hard drive benchmark is less the half of what it should be. More by luck than judgement, I found that cloning the original hard drive to a second drive and then cloning it back fixed the problem and the computer will then run fast again. Can anyone explain this for me?

 

[daveybrat]

More than likely the hard drive is running in PIO mode instead of DMA?? I've had that issue on a lot of customer's computers. Once that's fixed they are back to full speed.

Well....that and the fact that 90% of all the Windows XP machines i work on always have 256mb of ram and desperately need more added!

 

[iolewis]

Thanks for taking the time to reply.
The mode and RAM size are good points but I do always make sure the hard drive is running in DMA mode and I top up the RAM to 512 Mb. After this, the clone fix is still necessary and I don't understand why it works.

 

[btcomm1]

daveybrat, Is there a way to run it in DMA instead of PIO without cloning and then recloning?

 

[daveybrat]

Text

there's a manual way to do it by removing the controller and reinstalling or just by downloading the patch from the above website. Run it and reboot and it's fixed. This works on all hard drives and cdroms/dvd's.

 

[btcomm1]

Thanks, I will try it next time I run into a slow computer.

 

[Rottie]

I am curious I have two large Seagate HD both are less than a year old I looked at Device manager for primary IDE channel for both HD on same cable I notice Device 0 with Ultra DMA Mode 5 and Device 1 is PIO mode is that normal?
on Secondary IDE channel I see device 0 is Ultra DMA mode 4 and device 1 is set to auto detection and the transfer mode is not applicatable.
in case you might want to know...on motherboard two HDs are on IDE0 and DVD drive is on IDE2.

 

[daveybrat]

Rottie, nothing in your system should be running in PIO mode. It sounds like your secondary hard drive on the same chain as your main drive is running slower than it should. Try running the patch i linked to above and see if that changes it.

 

[Rottie]

it says no resetting