Extreme system slowdown w/sata

[Kobalt]

Hey guys Im really stumped this time. Just purchased a 74gig raptor sata hdd two weeks ago. I figured this would be a great time to reinstall windows and everything went without a hitch. System was blazing fast, booted winxp in well under a minute. Until today: I turn it on, blank screen after post instead of the usual winxp logo. I re-ghosted, same thing! While thinking for a minute or two, I realized the computer is not hung or frozen, as it went to the white bar loading screen. I have not seen that screen since my computer was 600mhz!

To make this long story (somewhat) short the system finally booted after about 5-6 minutes! It literally seemed that the hard drive would churn for a couple of seconds, then simply stop for what seemed like 10-15 seconds, work for a couple after that, then stop again, over and over. The ghost image restoration behaved exactly the same: hdd would work for a couple of seconds, take a cuple of seconds off, over and over. I poped in my old ide hdd and worked like a charm with constant loading and speed not being a problem. I checked all of the bios settings, with the raptor runing in udma-5 mode. What the heck happened? Is my drive going bad? It worked fine yesterday and I did not use my system for anything besides writing a paper. What could it be? Thanx in advance!

EDIT:

system specs:
P4 2.8 @ 3.5 w/ 1gig ram
Asus p4p800 mobo
74gig raptor sata
120gig maxtor ide
250gig maxtor ide
Sony Dru-710 ide
6800gt video
300w psu

 

[stevty2889]

Check in windows to see if windows is forcing it to run in PIO mode. If it's stuck in PIO, unistall the conroller and reboot to let it re-detect, thats should put it back in DMA mode.

 

[birdpup]

Another possibility is a virus, spyware, or malware. Try scanning your system in Safe Mode with a virus scanner and with a spyware scanner. Install the scanners normally, then reboot into Safe Mode. F8 or msconfig (Start, Run, msconfig, OK) are used to obtain access to Safe Mode.

Consolidated Security Thread
FlyingPenguin's Spyware Removal Procedure

 

[Kobalt]

No spyware or viruses and drive is confirmed in sata mode. Perhaps this is hardware related? Should I try to reflash drive firmware?

 

[birdpup]

Originally posted by: Kobalt
... I poped in my old ide hdd and worked like a charm with constant loading and speed not being a problem. I checked all of the bios settings, with the raptor runing in udma-5 mode. What the heck happened? ...

I think I missed that the first time.

No spyware or viruses and drive is confirmed in sata mode. Perhaps this is hardware related? Should I try to reflash drive firmware?

Yes, I think the appropriate thing to do is to uninstall and then reinstall the motherboard chipset drivers and any separate drivers for your SATA drives.