Drive access and Outlook VERY SLOW

[fcastle]

Whenever I first start my computer and go to open a file, the OPEN screen (say in MS Word) takes at least one full minute to come up. My hard drive light is on the entire time. This started about one month ago. This also occurs when I open Windows Explorer for the first time after turning on my computer. Now to add to it, Outlook is very slow. I click on a new message and it takes at least 5 full seconds for the lower window to show the message. This occurs when I delete a message as well. Even though the message list in the upper half shows the message gone, the lower window shows the message for at least 5 seconds.

Any suggestions?

P.S. I have turned OFF drive indexing.

 

[PCHPlayer]

Check to make sure that your drives are running in DMA mode. If not uninstall the drive and IDE controller and reboot.

 

[fcastle]

I know I have found where to check the DMA status of drives before, but now I cannot find it.

 

[fcastle]

Found it. For my primary IDE (disk drives), both say "DMA IF AVAILABLE". Device 0 shows "DMA MODE 5" and Device 1 says "DMA MODE 6". I am assuming this means DMA is enabled.

 

[TheCorm]

Originally posted by: fcastle
Found it. For my primary IDE (disk drives), both say "DMA IF AVAILABLE". Device 0 shows "DMA MODE 5" and Device 1 says "DMA MODE 6". I am assuming this means DMA is enabled.

It does indeed....Mode 5 = ATA100, Mode 6 = ATA133 (Maxtor?).

W2k/XP? - CTRL + SHIFT + ESC...check out the processes and see if anything is eating up lot's of CPU or Memory.

 

[fcastle]

It's XP. The next time it does its infernal minute-long drive access, I will check the processes if it lets me.

 

[DanTMWTMP]

i might sound stupid....but maybe defrag?

maybe a background process is conflicting?

installed office w/ antivirus running in the background? <--- if so uninstall, kill the antivirus process (ccapp or something like that for nortons..) and reinstall word


hehe reformat?

 

[fcastle]

XP says I don't need to defrag.

Nothing is running in the background except McAfee.

I MAY have installed Office XP without disabling McAfee first.

Reformat? It's getting to be about time anyway - about 6 months since the last time. It's just 2-3 hours of my life I'll never get back!

 

[SemperFi]

Just because xp says that defrag isn't necessecary doesn't mean you won't see a speed benifit from doing it.

 

[fcastle]

Originally posted by: SemperFi
Just because xp says that defrag isn't necessecary doesn't mean you won't see a speed benifit from doing it.

I guess I was putting faith in XP - what was I thinking! I will defrag and see what happens.

Thanks for everyone's help.

 

[SemperFi]

That is no guarantee. I just know from experience that all versions of windows would say a certain % fragmented defrag is not necessecary but would see a good boost from doing it anyhow.