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Help! an XP HDD tweak slowed my system to a crawl

W

wgoldfarb

Senior member
I wanted to apply a twek to my XP system to eliminate indexing and compression of my HDD to allow for faster HDD access (as suggested in this Tweaktown guide to tweaking XP ). Windows started the process to apply these changes, and the dialog box indicated that it would take about 20 hours to complete (!). So, I went to bed and allowed it to keep running overnight.

Today I woke up and found that the computer had restarted. It had only been about 7 hours since the process had started so I was surprised -- I expected to have about another 13 hours to go. I logged in and saw a balloon saying that an update had been applied automatically, and it had required an automatic restart of my computer.

The problem is that now my computer is excruciatingly slow. Every time I do anything it hangs for several seconds (20-30 seconds) before accessing the hard drive (the computer just sits there, the mouse pointer does not respond to mouse movements and the hard drive light is off). Then it "wakes up", continues doing whatever it was doing before it froze, works fine for a minute or so, and then it hangs again. This process repeats itself continuously.

I am not sure what could be causing it. My first guess is that the automatic update somehow interrupted the process to change the HDD compression and indexing settings, and it is somehow screwing with disk access. The other guess is that the disk overheated from so many hours of continuous work. I turned the computer off and will allow it to cool down all day today to see if it resolves the issue, but I wanted to see if anyone had any ideas as to what else might be causing this problem or how to resolve it.

Most of my data is backed up so I could, if necessary, just reformat and reinstall XP (or try repairing/installing without reformatting?) , but i'd rather avoid this for obvious reasons!

Any suggestions will be greatly appreciated!
 
Well first things first. When it comes to XP don't try to tweak a system to make it faster than it is already optimized to be. You will more than likely cause a bigger problem than you originally thought you had.

You can start by attempting a System Restore, backing up a couple days. It is a good assumption the automatic update would have caused the system to restart interrupting the supposed 'HDD tweak'.

Any process that claims 20 hours to make your system faster, really just doesn't sound right. I would start with the system restore.
 
Sorry, I should have provided some more background.

The system is an old Pentium III 1GHz HP Pavillion, 256MB RAM, and a Seagate 40GB 5400 RMP HDD. So, yes, the drive is slow, which is why I wanted to apply this tweak in the first place. The computer is mainly used by my kids to browse and play, and since they are still young their gaming is not demanding at all. They are set up with limited user accounts so I don't think they could have caused the problem. The computer originally had Win2K installed but when I gave it to my kids I got a copy of XP, thinking it might be better for them.

Because there is no critical data in the computer, and because slow HDD access has always been an issue, I had system restore turned off. To be frank, I think XP is taxing the resources of this computer too much, so I may just go back and reinstall Win2K, but before I did that I wanted to see if I could get XP to a point where we are not constantly waiting for the computer to access the HDD, instead of reinstalling Win2K.

I will wait for the HDD to cool down and see if that resolves it. If not, and if there are no "obvious" possible culprits, I don't want to waste anyone's time with a lengthy diagnosing process for a computer that has no critical stuff in it. I guess what I wanted to know is if anyone had any quick ideas as to possible causes. If those do not work, I will reinstall (XP or 2K, depending on my mood when I get to that point!) I'd rather waste my own time than yours!

And whatever I do, I guess I need to upgrade to a faster HDD <sigh>.
 
Originally posted by: wgoldfarb
I wanted to apply a twek to my XP system to eliminate indexing and compression of my HDD to allow for faster HDD access (as suggested in this Tweaktown guide to tweaking XP ). Windows started the process to apply these changes, and the dialog box indicated that it would take about 20 hours to complete (!). So, I went to bed and allowed it to keep running overnight.

Today I woke up and found that the computer had restarted. It had only been about 7 hours since the process had started so I was surprised -- I expected to have about another 13 hours to go. I logged in and saw a balloon saying that an update had been applied automatically, and it had required an automatic restart of my computer.

The problem is that now my computer is excruciatingly slow. Every time I do anything it hangs for several seconds (20-30 seconds) before accessing the hard drive (the computer just sits there, the mouse pointer does not respond to mouse movements and the hard drive light is off). Then it "wakes up", continues doing whatever it was doing before it froze, works fine for a minute or so, and then it hangs again. This process repeats itself continuously.

I am not sure what could be causing it. My first guess is that the automatic update somehow interrupted the process to change the HDD compression and indexing settings, and it is somehow screwing with disk access. The other guess is that the disk overheated from so many hours of continuous work. I turned the computer off and will allow it to cool down all day today to see if it resolves the issue, but I wanted to see if anyone had any ideas as to what else might be causing this problem or how to resolve it.

Most of my data is backed up so I could, if necessary, just reformat and reinstall XP (or try repairing/installing without reformatting?) , but i'd rather avoid this for obvious reasons!

Any suggestions will be greatly appreciated!
Click to expand...

The two things are likely unrelated.

First off, you don't need to detag every file for indexing, just turning off the indexing service will work just as well. And as far as compression goes...I'm a little unclear on what you did. Did you turn compression off (as in it was already on beforehand?), or did you turn it on?

Besides, the hangs don't appear to be due to disk access...look in task manager, and try to find out what process is locking up the CPU.

The disk certainly didnt overheat.

I'd check your IDE adapters in the device manager...make sure they are all running in DMA mode.

Detagging all the files on the drive shouldnt take 20 hours unless there is a MASSIVE amount of files on it. It should take a few minutes at most.

Anyways, 256mb on XP is going to be dog slow...its always accessing the HD because you dont have enough ram. Buy more ram before a new HD.
 
Thanks for all the help.

I waited a few hours and turned the system on. It is much better but still hangs for a few seconds (5 secs) every minute or so. It does not seem to be HDD related. I looked at task manager, and none of the processes seem to be taking much CPU time, but the CPU Usage History chart goes up all the way up every time the system hangs. Unfortunately, since it hangs, the task manager does not update to show which process is to blame. Is there a way to see "historical" usage of CPU time by process (similar to the overall CPU usage, but for an individual process). Honestly, for such an old system that is used only by my kids to play, it is probably not worth it to spend much more time to fix it or to invest any money into it. I may just end up reverting to Win2K <sigh>
 
Originally posted by: wgoldfarb
Thanks for all the help.

I waited a few hours and turned the system on. It is much better but still hangs for a few seconds (5 secs) every minute or so. It does not seem to be HDD related. I looked at task manager, and none of the processes seem to be taking much CPU time, but the CPU Usage History chart goes up all the way up every time the system hangs. Unfortunately, since it hangs, the task manager does not update to show which process is to blame. Is there a way to see "historical" usage of CPU time by process (similar to the overall CPU usage, but for an individual process). Honestly, for such an old system that is used only by my kids to play, it is probably not worth it to spend much more time to fix it or to invest any money into it. I may just end up reverting to Win2K <sigh>
Click to expand...

Something locking it up so hard that it overrides even task manager is almost always a hardware or driver problem.
 
Thanks for all the help. I tried the obvious: I undid the change that caused all the problems (to have XP stop indexing files on the hard drive). So, I checked the option to have XP index all the files. I waited a few seconds for it to finish, and unchecked the option again. The PC has been problem free for several days.

I guess it is stable for now. If it returns I will just revert to Win2K.

Thanks again!

 
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