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New Duron 850/KT266a build slow like molasses. Help wanted :)

G

GreenLantern

Senior member
My friend just built his first computer and it appears to be physically well set up. It being:
New:
ECS K7VTA3 KT266A mobo
Duron 850
Radeon 7200
Generic Case (quite good)
300w Deer AMD approved ps.
256MB PC2100 Crucial RAM
Ethernet card (not sure what kind)

From older pillaged machine:
Some old Harddrive 10GB (probably 5400/66ATA)
8x CD-ROM
Floppy
14inch piece of crap.

Win98SE installed. VIA 4 in 1 drivers. HD Primary Master, CD-Rom is primary slave
Power light at on front bezel works - the harddrive light never comes on. (figured it was simply not connected properly - but wouldn't affect performance)

2 problems:
1.
Can't configure NIC:
- Network adapter and Ethernet Controller don't have drivers installed. For the network adapter, windows will find the drivers (on the harddrive) and install seemingly correctly, but then it is not installed when you look at the properties. For the Ethernet controller (or was it card), it says it can't find a driver for it - but it doesn't even look - with the location checkboxes checked. 🙁. I tried deleting this items and then refreshing - and they both come back. What is the difference between the 2? Why are there 2? The mobo does not have a nic integrated.
2.
Slow. Just double clicking My Computer can take 30 seconds to render. Icons take a long time to appear whether it is the desktop or windows explorer. It behaves like a 133MHz with 16MBs of ram! My 233/64MB is way faster. Could the harddrive be poorly setup and be the cause?

It recognizes 256MB ram.

Any ideas?
 
Okay the slowness of the machine can be attributed to the hard drive. The you have...did you format the drive that you moved over?

The NIC card and the ethernet...do you have the driver cd for it. The reason you might be getting two is that the computer is recognizing it as a possible of two. Once a proper driver is installed the other should go away.

One thing sure a new hard drive would speed thinks up...
 


<< Okay the slowness of the machine can be attributed to the hard drive. The you have...did you format the drive that you moved over? >>

Oh yes, clean install. Formatted.
Proper drivers should clear up the nic problem though I've no idea why Windows won't even look for a driver.

There is nothing but Win98se, VIA 4in1 drivers (came with mobo, dunno which version but should be new enough for Win98), ATI drivers (came with card, dunno which version but should be new enough for Win98)

There is NO software installed yet.

A Harddrive properly configed could not cause a machine to be this slow. Could it? No way. I'm serious: 20 to 30 seconds just to open up the Control panel or My Computer. Click your explorer and then count 20 seconds on your watch. That's a long f'in time!:disgust:
 
Did you try diconnecting the old cdrom altogether and see if that make a difference?
Also how is the HD being recognized in the bios? Is it at UDMA2 =ATA66 or is using PIO mode?
Is the bios setting correct for the sspeed of the chip? and for the FSB?
 
Did you try diconnecting the old cdrom altogether and see if that make a difference?
Also how is the HD being recognized in the bios? Is it at UDMA2 =ATA66 or is using PIO mode?
Is the bios setting correct for the sspeed of the chip? and for the FSB?

Good leads, I should be able to get to it this Saturday. Thanks for the ideas. I would think the bios would default to ata66 and detect the right speeds but I'll check.
Thanks.
 
few more things to check, upgrade to the LATEST 4 in 1's, check your IDE cable for nics, this will explain packet loss, general slowness etc, as far as opening up my computer taking so long, that is because my computer checks all of the media in your system, this includes that slow 8x cd-rom, with my 52x it takes about 5 seconds to make sure everything is go, with 8x... as for the nic, after you verify the integrity of the ide cable (possibly try another, or another channel) copy the files to a local directory on your hard drive, then when windows searchers for drivers point it specifically to this directory.
 
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