All Drive Access Slow - CDROM Drive Light Keeps Blinking

[Enochroot]

I have an AMD Athlon 700 on a Gigabyte Mbd with Maxtor
60gb drive, TEAC CDROM writer, running Win 98SE using
the AMD drivers for IDE drives.

Here's the weirdness - After boot up , when you try to
open "my computer" it opens with a blank screen (no
drive icons) that sits for almost 2 minutes before
the drive stops frantically accessing and the icons appear!
I have defragged the drive which has no effect -
the other strange thing is the CDROM access LED keeps
pinging rhythmically every second like something is trying to access it - with or without a disc in the drive.
(I have dealt with this in SCSI chains but never seen
this in a no-SCSI system!)

I have tried shutting of all but the minimum in the system tray ( I normally run Zone Alarm Pro and Norton Antivirus)
it makes no difference. I also ran Norton Windoctor and
Full viruscan came up with nothing. If I leave the CPU
monitor on I notice the usage never drops all the way down
(most systems it will get down to 1-3% with nothing going on
this one keeps up around 8% and bouncing around - like
something is running in the backround that does not show
up when you hit "ctrl/alt/del". I boot into "safe mode" and the drive runs faster in "msdos compatability mode"!!
"My Computer" opens way faster and there is no pinging
of the CDROM drive...
How can I determine what is running invisible?
Or is this a drive problem with the Maxtor and the
IDE bus?

Thanks in advance for your time and thanks to all for the
great info I have gotten from the people in this forum!

I have this post in software as well.

 

[Mulga]

Obviously something is trying to access the CD drive.... Have you tried running msconfig from Start > Run to see what is loading at startup? maybe that will give you a clue. All things are possible except skiing through a revolving door.

 

[bendu]

Eject the tray and then open My Computer or put a cd in the drive and open My Computer.
If the window pops open like it should, you have a problem with a prog looking for something in the cdrom like Mulga said. If it takes forever still with a cd in the drive, then your cdrom my being dying.

If not, I would wonder, what changes have you made to the computer recently? Did you just add this cdrom and if you did, did you jumper it correctly. Does the bios correctly identify the drive etc.

 

[Stealer]

See if the cd rom is dying by booting of a boot disk and try to access the cd rom drive. Can you see the files on the cd rom. Can you change directories? Or try and open your case and remove the power connector going to the cd rom. Then try and boot. Does it boot at norman speed?

Stealer

 

[mikeindetroit]

Might want to unplug the power and data cables from the CDROM to eliminate it from the equation.

That will test to see if it is causing/adding to the problem.

Try telling your BIOS to run the drive in a slower mode (PIO Mode 0 is the slowest). Make sure you have good cables, of the right length. 18" for the 80 wire, 40 connector variety. Also, those newer cables are more reliable, better electrically, so it doesnt hurt to use one of those either.

Does everything run smoothly as long as you don't try to explore (My computer) the drives? Might be a Windows goofup if so. Consider upgrading to 2000 or XP. Both far better in every sense from 98SE, IMHO.

Keep reducing variables/options that it could be and you'll soon find the problem.

Mike

 

[Enochroot]

Thanks for all the input guys - I am still testing...
I tried a new ATA 66 cable and swapping the CDROM drive to
"Slave" and the DVDdrive(which works fine) to "master"
the TEAC W58E still blinks just the same...having
a disc in...still blinks just the same. I ran a maxtor
utility that limits the ATA100 hard drive by setting it's
BIOS to ATA66 - as I read stuff at the Maxtor site about
newer drives confusing older Mbds that do not know
the latest protocol (ATA100,ATA133) this neither helped
nor hurt... I have the latest BIOS for the Mbd and it
shows both the DVD and the CDROM correctly on bootup
(DVD is at UDMA 2, and the TEAC is PIO mode 4 which
according to my TEAC research is correct - no UDMA
on this model!) I am beginning to think it is just
"one of those things" as in Drive "x" and Drive "Y"
never behave together with chipset "z".

I will try disconnecting the DVD drive next.
I have another machine in my network that is almost identical - same Mbd same BIOS same CPU same MEM
but... a Western Digital 60GB instead of the Maxtor
and different CDROM drives - Also with Win 98SE
but it runs like "da bomb" faster than sh*t...
I know 98 bites but my 8 yr old son has lots of
old Win95 games and I have seen horror stories
with running that stuff on anything newer than 98SE.
Starting to think a WIN98 reinstall is in order.

 

[Stealer]

You did not say if you tried taking the cd rom out of the loop. Take it out and see if all is well.

Stealer

 

[ceh4702]

Make sure you are not in MSDOS Compatability Mode. This will slow everything down.

Also if you have changed the CMOS Settings for all the drives you have installed or added a drive, windows may be searching for components or have a problem with one of your drive devices. You may also have uninstalled something and windows is looking for it. Sometimes it is something in the Start Up menu, and sometimes it is something in Scheduler that can cause a problem.

If you do not like my post feel free to point out your opinion or my errors.