Slow hard drive access on MSI 925XE setup.

[imported_Fedor]

Hi,
Ive built a system recently, its a P4 3.4GHz LGA775 on an MSI 925XE mobo. 1GB RAM. Dont see how any other specs would help out here, except to say that the hard disks in use are a SCSI Cheetah X15-36LP on an Adaptec 29160 card, 4 x 120GB WD drives, 1 x 160GB WD drive, and an external 40GB notebook drive connected via USB2.

OS is Windows XP Pro.

Now, as for the actual problem, the system likes to have small breaks (less than a second typically, the longer ones can be up to a second) where even though I can still move the mouse, nothing responds. This means that even hovering the mouse over a program in the taskbar doesnt highlight it, and clicking anything wont achieve anything. When the pause is over, the clicks or text (if typing) will however go through, so the system buffers those actions while it takes its pause. The pauses dont come in any predictable (at least to me) order, however they do take place far more often when the hard drive subsystem is being used, so for example firing up something like a disk defragger would result in many pauses whilst its working.

One thing potentially worthy of mention is that the external USB2 drive seems to not induce this sort of behaviour. Another thing is that these pauses were evident even straight after a fresh install, so it cant be something like spyware.

As for drivers, I got the latest drivers off the MSI website when installing, and today went back and got some newer ones, but they didnt fix anything. Also grabbed the latest Intel chipset INF driver pack.

So, any ideas? If Ive forgotten to include some details you need, sorry, go ahead and tell me what else could help.

 

[imported_Fedor]

Oh yeah I forgot another thing. There doesnt seem to be a pattern to the following, another problem.

When in My Computer in an explorer window, clicking on a hard drive, and/or going into directories within, only shows the contents with a slight delay, we're talking something like a quarter of a second I would guess. Before you decide Im crazy for picking on such a thing, other times, the same drive and/or directory, will show contents instantly, with literally no perceivable delay, and that is how it should be, and was on my old 845P chipset-based system. When there is a delay for going into drives and into their directories, the phenomenon is universal, it happens on all the drives. Im not sure about the external one actually, I wanted to go check right now, but the computer has decided to work properly when I need it not to and things are showing up instantly everywhere I go.

I have My Computer set to expand to show a list in the Start Menu, and even though the directories show up instantly when in an explorer window now, clicking on a drive from the list that pops up from My Computer leads to >1 second wait time before the contents appear.

 

[Harvey]

Scan for viruses and spyware and defrag your drives. A good system analyzer and registry cleaner, such as WinDoctor in Norton System Works or other good utilities could help.

 

[imported_Fedor]

Hi,
Thanks for the advice, however Im extremely skeptical as to how much it could help me considering that the problem I mentioned existed straight from the beginning of a completely fresh install, on a freshly formatted HD. The controller that handles the PATA drives is the VIA VT6410 - perhaps you know of it having crappy drivers or something?
Thanks for your time.

 

[meltdown75]

Hi there & welcome.

My opinion is that your slight delay is merely a consequence of your setup, more specifically perhaps just one of the drives in your setup. Are any of the drives wonky or sub-par in terms of age / condition? You might want to try disconnecting one or more to see if the problem persists. I would be willing to bet that one "misbehaving" drive would be enough to create the minor lag in response - especially if it is the drive you're using for your OS. Just a suggestion... but again with that number of drives, the odds that every one of them is performing at 100% are sketchy...

 

[imported_Fedor]

Thanks for the welcome

Well the SCSI drive is running the OS, and its about 2 years old, and thus even has 3 more years of warranty. The others range in age, but the 4 120GB ones are all the same make and model, and the 160GB drive is less than one year old. I guess Ill try playing around with the 120s, is there any way to be more certain about what youre saying - one of them being "wonky"? I mean none of them have bad sectors, I did a thorough (including surface scan) chkdsk once the problem presented itself and they all checked out like new. Any utilities you might recommend for diagnosis? Ill play with the drives and report.

I have to add one thing in here though - my old setup based on the 845 chipset worked flawlessly, completely same config of drives. And the issue happened immediately after switching to the 925XE setup. So Ill definitely give a shot to what you said, but in light of what I just said I cant help but be tempted to point the finger at the motherboard, or maybe the VIA controller I mentioned, or maybe drivers.

Thanks for the suggestions, will report back when I can.

 

[imported_Fedor]

Hey. Reason it took me so long is that like I mentioned, I cant spot any pattern to when the "lag" turns on and off, so I had to run all the different combos for quite a while before I could verify what was going on. Unfortunately for me, all the variations Ive tried still led to the lag I mentioned. Really disappointing