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Hard Drive in XP going crazy

B

BarnyardMonkey

Platinum Member
Was hoping maybe there is a tweak of some kind to get this problem fixed.

after installing XP pro on one of my new systems,the HD is going crazy.
HD is doing alot of tasking just sitting idle,or after loading up a program (Cool Edit Pro),the HD led will keep flashing for quite some time even after the prog is loaded and sitting idle.


even just browsing the net it will start tasking alot.HD gets loud and led constant blinks.

have tried a system before this one with XP Pro and it did the same thing.
i switched back to Win98SE in that system.

was hoping to stay with XP with this one.

Specs:

WinXP Pro
MS-6330 Socket A Board (OEM) - Not the Lite version,and no Onboard Sound (Bios is 7.00.xx i think)
Tbird 1Ghz
384Mb PC133
15G IDE IBM 7200RPM HD ATA/33
Geforce2 GTS 32Mb AGP
SB Live! X-Gamer 5.1
48x IDE Cdrom
10x DVD-Drive
All latest Drivers (Vid,Sound,NIC)

If anyone might know what the problem is i'd appreciate it.



Shawn.
 
Rude, yes it suffers from slow down as well.

A for that Bios version,i'm not quite sure which one this takes.
it is the OEM MS-6330 Ver: 2.1.
(with non Onboard Sound)

not the Lite version that i believe the 3.2 update is for.
it's OEM by Gateway.
has the Gateway logo at top of screen.

and also,it seems the Bios version of this one is a 7.00.xx number.

any idea where i can check for an update?
couldn't find it on MSI's site.unless i overlooked it.
only lists the Lite version.


Shawn.
 
This may be the problem.

Here's a quote from the web page. Don't you just hate it when you're playing a game of Hearts and your system decides that you are doing "nothing", so it can start indexing your files, thereby slowing down your game to a crawl.
 


<< . . . A for that Bios version,i'm not quite sure which one this takes.
it is the OEM MS-6330 Ver: 2.1.
(with non Onboard Sound)

not the Lite version that i believe the 3.2 update is for.
it's OEM by Gateway.
has the Gateway logo at top of screen.

and also,it seems the Bios version of this one is a 7.00.xx number.

any idea where i can check for an update?
couldn't find it on MSI's site.unless i overlooked it.
only lists the Lite version.


Shawn. >>

First I would contact Gateway and ask for tech support or check their online info and support. They should provide tech support.

I would update your BIOS if possible unless using onboard RAID (in which case you must back up any data to save on some other drive or somewhere else before upgrading your BIOS). Your problem still sounds like an XP incompatibility (BIOS) because you have plenty of RAM, HD space, CPU power, etc.

I might only try an MSI BIOS as last resort and only if Gateway/MSI say they can work. Only found these versions of the MS-6330 on the MSI website, and can't tell which yours is from your info (not the Lite, but could be others). I must think you have an OEM (Gateway) BIOS if you have version 7 (probably AMI) while every other 6330 board seems to use AMD and doesn't go above v3.3:

K7T Turbo MS-6330 V3.0
http://www.msi.com.tw/support/bios/bios.php?model=MS-6330+V3.0

K7T Pro MS-6330
http://www.msi.com.tw/support/bios/bios.php?model=MS-6330

MS-6330 Lite MS-6330LE V1.0
http://www.msi.com.tw/support/bios/bios.php?model=MS-6330LE+V1.0

MS-6330 LE3 MS-6330 Lite V3.0
http://www.msi.com.tw/support/bios/bios.php?model=MS-6330+Lite+V3.0

K7T Turbo2 MS-6330 V5.0
http://www.msi.com.tw/support/bios/bios.php?model=MS-6330+V5.0
 
this isnt likely, but a virus could be causing your problem... we had a breakout of nimda a few weekends ago, those who were infected noticed a severe slowdown in their systems
 
Justin, I appreciate all your efforts here.thanks for the links.
however i did manage to track down the right BIOS for this board.
it was on the gateway site.
i knew the Board was an OEM from Gateway,but just wasn't sure what the Mod# that Gateway had it as.

Heres the Exact Board - MS-6330 - Gateway OEM

i installed the new BIOS a little bit ago.
it may seem to be a bit better,but only loaded a couple progs as of right now.
and the HD still had quite a bit of Activity after Prog was loaded.

will test more later on.


And as for a Virus, i'm all clean. 🙂



Shawn.
 
I had a very similar problem. It turned out that XP was logging to a file called trace.log in the windows\system32\logfiles\wmi folder. You might check this file and see if it is growing as your hard drive grinds.

This problem happened after using the BootVis utility from Microsoft to improve my boot times. I was able to turn off the logging in BootVis, but it would start again after a re-boot.

There is an excellent utility called filemon that you can get from download.cnet.com that will show all of your disk activity and help you track down your problem. If it turns out to be the same as mine, then let me know and I'll post the fix from Damon at Microsoft support (who gave excellent assistance in fixing my problem).
 
chaswood, I installed that Prog you mentioned.
not sure what all of it means but,just sitting idle it is scrolling alot of things.
specially when i go to a webpage like tech support page here,it will give alot of the following line:

IRP_MJ_Write* C:\Documents and Settings\name\Temp Internet Files

and also getting alot of these just sitting idle:

IRP_MJ_Write* C:\$Logfile

From around 4:26 to 4:35,its showing 16825 listings.
and all i did was bring up Cool Edit Pro for a sec then closed it.
and hit reply for this here message.


If you can help me out let me know.



Shawn.
 
Over 16k writes in about 10 minutes does seem high. I would suggest that you close all programs and then just run filemon alone for a while. You're looking for an unusual amount of activity from one program.

Keep in mind that XP writes to disk on a very regular basis and a fair amount of activity is normal. Sitting idle, my machine does about 75-100 disk i/o's per minute, much of it by a process called svchost with requests like IRP_MJ_(CREATE, WRITE, QUERY, CLOSE, etc.) IRP_MJ_WRITE to the $logfile is pretty common.

If, after a few idle minutes, your still getting over 1000 writes, there is probably something wierd. Look for a process other that svchost, explorer, or system that is causing most of the i/o's. Once you find it, go to the Task Manager (ctrl-alt-del) and kill that process. If this action does not make your system unstable then you're probably on the right track.

Hope this helps!
 
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