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HD causing OS to slow down?

L

LuDaCriS66

Platinum Member
I have a WD 800JB 8mb cache drive with WinXP home edition installed.. and whenever I'm doing something like installing a game while using IE, everything slows down a lot...
For example, it would take 3-5 seconds just to switch to another window or to minimize my current window..

I don't even think it was this slow when I had my old Quantum Fireball 20GB drive as master..

I checked my primary ide channel properties and everything was fine there.. the 800jb is set at DMA mode 5..

any ideas?
 
If that drive is the only one on that IDE channel, check its jumper setting and make sure it is set to 'single' instead of 'master'. Don't know if that's your problem but if those drives are set to master and they are the only one on the chain, they often do something with the IDE bus that slows the system way down. Jumping it as 'single' solves the problem. Many people have reported this quirk with the WD special edition drives.
 
Well I have 2 drives on the channel.. the 800jb has master and a quantum fireball as slave.. I was told it could be my RAM too.. I have 256mb on WinXP.. I had 512 total but one stick started to cause BSOD's on me. I haven't had the time to RMA it yet either cuz I'm going off the college in a few days..
 
256 mb of RAM should be more than enough to run Win XP, IE and install a game. While I run Win 2000 Pro, instead of Win XP, I have tried multiple times to max out the amount of RAM I have been using. It takes queing up 1000+ songs in Win Amp, Running Java, having about 15 IE windows open Running a game and tring to rip a CD at the same time all while downloading about 100 files in order to even get over 256 MB of Ram. If you aren't doing somethingthing that just soaks up ram, like rendering or desinging something in 3D with something like Solid Works (and I would say compiling but in my programs that hasn't soaked up to much ram even in my bigger programs, but take into account that I am really an amature programer) the amount of RAM you have should be sufficient for what you are doing. The speed of your RAM might do it. Regardless I would look elsewhere for the problem than the amount of RAM that you have.

Sarsos
 
Having the two drives on the same channel is a likely cause for those delays, especially if they are running in different DMA modes. Try having the new drive as the secondary master. Other than that, defragmentation is also a good idea.
 
Originally posted by: Alphazero
Having the two drives on the same channel is a likely cause for those delays, especially if they are running in different DMA modes. Try having the new drive as the secondary master. Other than that, defragmentation is also a good idea.
Click to expand...

Well one of them is on DMA mode 4 and the 800jb is on DMA mode 5.. but I was under the impression that with newer chipsets, this didn't matter? and I just checked.. the drive doesn't need defragmenting
 
Does this problem even have anything to do with your HD? Do you hear lots of disk thrashing or something when changing windows or apps? If not, I wouldn't think that this was a HD issue. But I could be wrong I guess.

Hmm, re-read your original post. Do you have the proper chipset/inf type files loaded up? If using a P4 are you running the current version of IAA? I'd just check stuff like that first as well. Maybe you can post your mobo chipset and such.
 
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