Stalling on a 1200C?

[pamf]

Here's a basic rundown on my system: Athlon 1200C, ABIT kt7a, 384mb pc133, 30gb maxtor 5400, via 4in1 4.32, win98 se

Now here's the problem .. I keep getting 'stalling' .. I'll do something like copy a file, and the system will just stop for a few seconds.. mp3s stop, mouse stops, everything .. then it picks up again.. I never had this on my 466 with 64mb ram, so this is quite irritating .. Anyone know what might be the cause? I've tried defragging and scandisk, and I've also ran maxtor's hd utils, which say the drive is in perfect working order..

I've got a windows managed swap file on D:, which has about 17gb to play in..

If you need any more details, just let me know .. Any help is appreciated!

 

[jasonlee123]

How much ram do you have on this system? Adjust your swapfile to uhmmm let say 200 mb min and max, that should be plenty of swap file. This will keep windows from lagging trying to adjust this size itself. This should definately add a few milliseconds. Are you networked at all? What services do you have running in the background when you start up? Hold the windows key and press the "r" on your keyboard, then type in "msconfig" without the quotes. On this windows go to the startup tab. There uncheck anything that you are not using at that exact moment and would not like starting up everytime you start winblows. You might as well leave scanreg checked and systray, but contrary to what some people might say they are not necessary. You might also want to leave your virus software running too. Just a couple ideas...let me know what happens, im curious.

Jason

 

[pamf]

As I said, I have 384mb pc133. I'm only networked with my linux box (via ICS). I don't have any virus software or anything in startup that I don't need/use.. And I've tried fixed-swap files before, they always seem to totally kneecap performance

 

[jasonlee123]

There is no way that setting the min/max of your swapfile can possible hinder your swapfile performance. You may need to defrag your swap file if its on another partition once you set the limits tho. And you said your system halts when you copy files, from where are you copying files from? What im getting at is maybe your network is slowing you down. Do you have a gateway setup to link your pc and linux machines? When did you first notice this? Did you install any hardware? Another very likely possibility is that your have conflicting or shared IRQ's. If you need to know where to check those let me know. You might want to try removing any extra customized settings to windows like, wallpaper, screen saver, sounds, mouse, theme. These DO take memory and need to be rendered every glance at them. Another, more rare possibility is that your RAM (assuming you have to chips) may quasi incompatible with each other (assuming they are different brands), or they arent what your board calls for. Keep me informed, and sorry if I am giving you ideas that you have already thought of just need to make sure we start from scratch so we dont miss anything because i dont know where you left off.

 

[pamf]

Well, it hindered it... Before and after defragging. I was just running it that way the other day and it was even worse..

And it does it copying files from anywhere.. cdrom, from one dir to another, etc. It also does it doing graphics work, sound work, and in other places. I tried decoding an mp3 to disk with winamp the other day, and it blazed through to about 3 minutes in about 2 seconds, then sat there for 20 seconds with the hd light on and mouse locked up until it kicked in again and finished. I don't see why this would even go near the swap file.. thats when I got the maxtor diagnostic util ..

The drive's ATA100 btw.. (proper cable, bios reports it as such) maybe 98 SE has some problem with that? I haven't bothered with any windows updates yet.. I'll go grab some now though ..

The machines are linked via crossover..

It's been happening since I upgraded.. I've got the same hardware I've had since then. Nothing added since my last reformat.

No conflicts, Shared IRQs:
IRQ10: Geforce2 MX/ACPI IRQ Holder for PCI IRQ Steering
IRQ11: Realtek RTL8029(AS) NIC/VIA Tech 3038 PCI to USB controller/VIA Tech 3038 PCI to USB controller
IRQ12: SB Live/ACPI IRQ Holder for PCI IRQ Steering
IRQ14: Primary IDE/VIA Bus Master PCI IDE Controller
IRQ15: Secondary IDE/VIA Bus Master PCI IDE Controller

I don't have any extraneous customizations except some small sounds (< 1sec) and desktop wallpaper..

Both chips are Micron PC133. 256, and 128..

 

[foofoo]

i have had this happen before and it be a symptom of a hard drive going bad.
i would back up and run sme drive fitness test software. perhaps you've got a spare hd to ghost your present hd onto and test it that way?

 

[jasonlee123]

Ok. If you have 2 cdrom drives and you probably do, and you leave cd's in those drives, everytime you use the explorer.exe kernal the os index's the contents of those cd's, thus stalling. Check that. Any type of data rendering, video, audio, and even burning (especially burning), suffers the most from windows swap file mgmt. This is probably not your problem tho. You have 384 megs and that should be fine for win98se. Windows 2000, by default installs with UltraDMA disabled. This isnt true for 98 but something could have disabled it. The following is the reg key for enabling/disabling it:

Key: [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\
{4D36E96A-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}\0000]
Value Name: EnableUDMA66
Data Type: REG_DWORD (DWORD Value)
Value Data: (0 = disabled, 1 = enabled)

Are you using TCP/IP on your LAN?

Look for an update for your mobo particularily your via chipset. Your Athlon, is it a Tbird? Im not sure what the 1200C is. Overclocked? Try taking the side panel off and running it for a day. Do you have DSL? If you do is it static or dynamic? These are questions in case you were ghosting. Do a disk cleanup (right click and properties on c drive and &quot;diskcleanup&quot. Remove your adware, ONLINE VIRUS SCAN, and try a new crossover. Are you emulating anything? Do you dual boot?

 

[jasonlee123]

Yeah hes right it could be your hd getting old. You did say you ran some tests on it and it was ok tho. Maybe try benchmarking it and see how it holds up.

 

[pamf]

foofoo: I ran maxtor's diagnostic util, it says the drive's fine (the advanced tests, take about 15 minutes..)

jason: yea, ive got two drives.. im used to the hang while it indexes them, and it's not that.. it only does that once and then it's fine .. (and even then theres nothing in them 90% of the time..) DMA was disabled on all drives.. just turned it on.

As for the lan, i'd imagine so. I just set ICS up and set linux to dhcp ..

the 1200C is a tbird with a 266mhz fsb.. It's not overclocked. And it's fine temperature wise.. My orb keeps it at around 40 degrees idle and 65-70 with load, but I'm replacing that soon .. I'm on dialup. (usr 56k hardware)

I've got an older bios.. 12/15/2000 .. The newer ones caused nothing but problems........ As for chipset drivers, I've got the via 4 in 1 4.32 .. which is apparently the newest one..

Adware? Online virus scan? Your words mean nothing to me..

No emulation, and dual booting is for sissies

What benchmark util would you recommend? I don't do much benchmarking.

 

[pamf]

Thanks guys, I dunno if it was the dma, one of the updates, or what.. but it's working great now .. just decoded a 16 minute mp3 in about 20 seconds.. no stops in the mouse or anything.

 

[jasonlee123]

http://www.geocities.com/guyfrombayarea/benchmark.zip follow this link to a zip file containing the setup files for installing Si Soft Sandra, an excellent benchmarking utility.