Part III: Computer still freezing/slow -- UPDATE: Solved, finally

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R

Red

Diamond Member
Aug 22, 2002
3,704
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UPDATE: Ran Some SiSoft Sandra tests and I found the Culprit. I did a test on my file system and my C: drive was only doing 3,100 kb / sec while a comparable hard drive was doing 30,000 kb/sec. Found out my 250GB western digital was locked in PIO mode. I uninstalled the "Primary IDE Channel" in system properties, restarted windows, and walla, UDMA mode 5, computer back to normal. Not sure why it went from UDMA to PIO after 5 months though.

Ok, so let me explain what is still going on now. Computer is: 3.0 w/ HT P4 @ 800mhz FSB. 512MB PC3200, 250 GB Western Digital HD, Radeon 9800 pro card.

Computer takes a long time to boot into XP (60 seconds) and sometimes (1 out of 5 times) windows won't even boot, computer crashes.
Computer extremely slow / choppy first 5 minutes or so of Windows...when it "warms up" after about 5 minutes it runs fine.
Hard Drive activity light flashes almost solid the entire time this is going on. Windows task manager shows CPU @ 0% yet hard drive light is solid and computer running slow.

Things I've tried and results:

1. Memtest86 ... Three passes show memory is fine.
2. Downloaded Western Digital's disk drive utilities (S.M.A.R.T) and it says the hard drive is fine.
3. Virus scan comes up clean.
4. Fresh reinstall of Windows, no better.
5. Tried it before and after windows updates, they don't help.

Any ideas, please? Anything other software tests I can do to try to figure this crap out? Thanks guys.
 
OverVolt

OverVolt

Lifer
Aug 31, 2002
14,278
89
91
Well since it happened again after a windows reinstall, its either the same software you installed (drivers or something else), BIOS, or a hardware problem.

As a matter of fact i have the same issue, only its a bit different. I have a P4 3.0 800FSB in a P4C800 I875 Chipset and my computer doesn't take a long time to boot up, but if i run anything CPU intensive in the first say 15minutes of bootup, my computer will just reboot randomly, but if i run something say an hour after bootup, i can run two simutaneous folding@home consoles while playing americas army and downloading stuff from the net and no crashes. Also i've run memtest86 for 2days and over 1,000 passes without errors.

If i were you i would try turning off system restore (i don't think it has anything to do with the problem but w/e), i do on all my rigs i guess you don't have to but i hate the wasted disk space, if something goes wrong a fresh install is always better anyway. Get the latest drivers and maybe even a BIOS update couldn't hurt (unless you do it wrong :D). Also try moving your PCI cards around, it could be some kind of conflicting devices with your hard drive thats slowing things down.

Also i had a problem with the computer i made for m dad where the system would take 30minutes just to show the desktop, and the HDD activity light would be on the whole time, turns out it was the PSU since i was using some real cheap $40 Generic 350w deal so if you have a cheap generic PSU i would test it with a different PSU. But what told me it was the PSU on my dads rig was when i would actually unplug the computer, plug it back in a few minutes later the computer would run fine, but if i shutdown and didnt unplug, when i would reboot it would take a good 30mins and it would be so slow it could take up to a minute for the mouse to move.

Maybe you can try unhooking some devices like CD-roms ect and see if that helps the system at all thats something i would definatly try.
 
S

Sid59

Lifer
Sep 2, 2002
11,879
3
81
Originally posted by: JimRaynor
good that you solved it, what was the problem?
Click to expand...

my C: drive was only doing 3,100 kb / sec while a comparable hard drive was doing 30,000 kb/sec. Found out my 250GB western digital was locked in PIO mode.
Click to expand...
 
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