mystery bottleneck

[DollyDagger]

hi,

I have:

Asus k7vza m/b
Amd ath 950
IBM deckstar dlta-307030
LG cdrw
128- 133mhz sdram
geforce2 mx
windows ME

Generally what should be a pretty fast system, but - its really slow!

Well not quite, but it takes _ages_ to load things.
According to the label on the hd itself, it is 7200rpm, but whenever i go on a friend's computer with a lower spec but with a 7200rpm hd it loads things a lot faster. the weird thing is on the receipt from the shop i bought it from, it sez the hd is 5200rpm.

eg, when i put a cd in and open "my computer" the cddrives delays it a bit while spinning up, but then there is another delay while the hd reads.

Any ideas why its so slow?

ps. in device manager, it sez the HD drive requires no drivers, and the drive is named Generic IDE ...

thx. "I didn't do it"

 

[brendanhedges]

in the bios make sure the ide for this hard drive is set to 100udma/ata. the ibm 7200 shoulb be a 100udma drive.

this ide channel may be set as 33.

Also remove the generic drive and install the drivers that came with the mobo. they should be specific for the chipset on the board. I have via ones loaded in mine.

I have a similar system and yes it is quick. so should yours be.

 

[brendanhedges]

another thought, is win running in dos comp mode? i suspect it might be.
check in control panel - system - performance.

 

[hc25036]

Sounds like DOS comp mode to me too. Just in case it isn't, it is also worth thinking about your power supply. With that spec it must be 300 watts or more...

 

[DollyDagger]

Its not in dos comp, and i've checked the power settings so that they are always on. When i look in the "pc health" option in bios, all voltages are correct and from the heat the darn thing's producing i think the power is ok.

i'm learning as i go hardware-wise, so bear with me, but drivers for the m/b do what with the hard drive?

Anyway thanx for the responses. "I didn't do it"

 

[DollyDagger]

I checked for ide-100udma/ata, but all i could find was
HDD-0 UDMA (Auto)

the only other option was disable.

Anyway i tried the m/b disk and its all installed. I removed the "generic hd" in "system" but i couldnt install any other drive because i dont have any drivers. The IBM site is a joke and i cant find any sort of downloadable drivers..... Do they only have one driver per type like "DLTA drivers" . o Yeah, good idea. Well pls add a post if u have any other suggestions. "I didn't do it"

 

[DollyDagger]

Getting some crap IBM installation disk manager thing that might work.

Can you explain what u mean by "DOS comp mode" cos i think we might be thinking different things.

Thanks. "I didn't do it"

 

[brendanhedges]

you need to get the drivers for you mobo, not the HDD these will enable the HDD to talk to the mobo properly. these should be available from the asus web site.

 

[DollyDagger]

I dont think its a mobo problem, cos it PnP's the drive as IBm DLTA-307030 etc every time. The only thing i can find out of place is the drive being called "Generic IDE ...." in system.

Im trying to get the drivers anyway. "I didn't do it"

 

[hc25036]

A couple of things - DOS compatability mode is something Microsoft put in so that those of us with really old kit than was designed before Windoze was invented could still be persuaded to upgrade. During installation, if Windows finds a device that it doesn't understand it will force DOS compatibility mode for that device. Sometimes(!) this happens by mistake. (Safe mode is essentially DOS compatability mode for your HD and some other bits!). If it is happening, (this is from memory as I have NT on this PC) right-click on "my computer" on your desktop and choose "properties" from the menu. On the dialogue box that opens, locate yout hard disk if it is marked by a yellow symbol, this is your problem. Choose "properties" and go through the tabs to see if DOS compatability mode is active. If it is come back here for one of the better guys here to help!!

With regard to the power supply, it was not the voltages that I was concerned about, but the rating in watts (should be on the label on the PSU). You have some pretty power-hungry kit, and less than 300 watts will be straining to keep up, and it may just cause the problems you have. This is a long shot tho'

Good luck

 

[DollyDagger]

hum, well i checked that there are no warnings, and there arent.

As for power, the PSu is rated @ 300W. I tried without the cdrom connected and there was no performance benefit. O well, i might be able to sort something with the hd drivers im dl'ing "I didn't do it"

 

[brendanhedges]

dolly,
as i said i have a similar system. including a ibm deskstar HDD. it did not come with any drivers either. it does not need any.
the problem is mobo related and the drivers are required so that win can regognise the northbridge chipset on the mobo this is the largish chipset roughly in the middle of the mobo, it will proberbly have a small fan on it or a heatsink. these chipsets are usually made by a company called 'via' i suspect this will be known as 133 these are the commonest ones used for amd cpu's at the moment. this chipset is used as a junction between all of the items in the computer that transfer data, cpu, hdd, mobo, cd etc.

on the mobo somewhere there will be the idendification number for it. copy down this number and take it to the asus site where there are many drivers on it ready for download.
make sure you get the right ones as this is very important.
unzip the file and run it. it will install the correct drivers for your hdd. hey presto the hard drive can talk to the mobo as intended.

try not to read to much into problems with computers, often even severe faults will have a fairly simple cure.

post again and let me know what happened.

 

[DollyDagger]

Well i got the driver for the via chipset, and i installed that. And... nothing. Exactly the same as before, windows sees the HD as some generic crap, even though the BIOS sees it as the correct drive.

hum!?

Thanks anyway. "I didn't do it"

 

[gunthnp]

ok in windows make sure you are running dma on that will slow it down a lotadn if it via ou should have a driver for the ide channel So long and thanks for all the fish.

 

[DollyDagger]

Yeah i checked that on, i've done everything anyone ever wanted of me.... all i ever wanted was a fast hard drive......! waaagh!

Is there any way that i can update ME's list of non-PnP storage devices so that I can select it manually?

or other suggestions? "I didn't do it"

 

[gunthnp]

i don't think the hard drive is at fault this my sound stuipd but had the drive been defraged if you have try something like speed disk but one that will affect the speed of a hard drive if the memory it has on it that can range from a meg to 32 meg just depends on the drive check it. So long and thanks for all the fish.

 

[teknoguy]

get your friends hard drive... hook it up... and see if it does the same thing.

 

[jgoodman00]

Are you sure the bottleneck is in the hard disk? If the whole system is slow look to the CPU caching within the bios. This will make a massive impact on system performance, & is very commonly setup incorrectly. The bios/setup defaults often set this incorrectly, destroying system performance.


James Goodman
j.goodman00@btinternet.com

 

[DollyDagger]

i think that the bios is set up fine, im pretty sure its the
hd. Anyway DMA is on, and I did defrag! Anyway, as for my old computer running ME that detects the right HD's.

This leads me to a very very very very long shot.
i have what could be best described as a "dodgy" ME installation. I'm always getting windows protection errors, etc, and i cant even shut down properly because i get a protection error every time, so I have to shut it down a bent way.

Anyway, do u think this could lead to the HD being improperly detected? - long shot i know!

unfortunatly, i don't have access to the ME cd to reinstall. Is this a possibility? "I didn't do it"

 

[jgoodman00]

A dodgy ME installation will not affect the bios detection of the drive, as long as it has not tampered with the Fdisk settings, or scandisk has corrected an alledged FAT error & made things worse.

What symptoms are you experiencing exactly, & as a result why do you suspect the HDD?

If I were in your position, the next thing I would do anyway is try formatting & reinstalling the OS (Probably running Fdisk & creating fresh partitions to be sure). Assuming the problem is OS induced, this will rectify it. If it is a hardware or bios error, it will not.

James Goodman
j.goodman00@btinternet.com