Windows XP slows way down.... WHY? (1 Viewer)

[Martin Fontaine]

Now, when I boot, sometimes the WAV file that plays at logon skips! Then when all programs load (Stuff like Seti, E-Mail, ICQ, StopZilla, Webshots) it takes noticably longer than before.

The only 2 things that I remember doing that COULD have caused this are:

1. Added a 27 Gig HD which was my old HD before I got the 60 Gigs I'm using now. I reformatted it as 1 partion (NTFS) It used to have my old installation/programs before I got the 60 Gigs and copied things over. At that time (Last April) I had strange problems with my PWS (Which I replaced) and having 2 HDDs sometimes caused the PWS to refuse starting up. Now that I have a new PWS (Replaced in June if I can rememeber) I could put the 27 Gigs back in, I just didn't get around to it until last week.

1.1. I removed a ATI TV Tuner card at the same time as I put the 27 Gigs in since it is not recognized under XP (Was appearing as "Other Device" with a yellow "?" in Device Manager) I posted a thread acking for a replacement. I doubt Windows is "looking" for it since it is no longer mentionned at all in Device Manager.

2. Converted my first 2 partitions (4 and 2 Gigs respectively) to NTFS. I backed up the files to the 27 Gigs before just in case.

Windows seems way slower ever since that. Is there something wrong with my setup? Isn't NTFS supposed to be faster than FAT32?

Another weird oddity is that earlier today, it got stuck on the POST and I needed to power down, wait 15 secs and power on again to boot and then Primary HDD Fail!!! WTF! Rebooted again and my CMOS settings were gone, reconfigured them and now the HDD was back!

So I went on Gigabyte's website to download a more recent BIOS and flashed my BIOS (With all the mouse jerkyness and strange thing, could be a corrupted BIOS) Then Windows XP won't boot! Not even in Safe mode!

I put the Win XP in the CD and booted with it, did a repair install. It seems to work fine now but the slowness in booting is still there and sometimes it takes kinda long just to start or close Folder or Browser windows.

Thinking it might be HD Fragmentation, I defraged many times in the last week or so (Since the FS convert) and it only seems to make it worst!

What should I do? Are the CMOS/Boot problems just coincidence/one time only glitches or is my MoBo faulty and need to be replaced? Is there some special tweak I should do in XP (I'm using Pro) or should I reinstall it from scratch (Formatting the C: and D: drives properly into NFTS not FAT32 converts)

 

[Max Leung]

Faulty RAM? Irritable CD-ROM hogging the IDE controller slowing everything down?

Try unplugging the IDE cables from all the drives except your boot drive, and see if Windows boots up faster. Then, add them in one at a time until the machine acts up again. That way, you know if one of the drives is causing problems. Also, make sure the master/slave settings are correct for each drive.

If you have more than one stick of RAM in your PC, try removing all but one, and see how it boots. Try swapping sticks too.

You may need to install Windows XP from scratch...those ATI drivers might not be fully uninstalled and are causing you massive amounts of grief.

Good luck!

 

[Glenn Overholt]

Oh, lets see. If you put your old drive back in did you switch cables? Some of the newer IDE drives go faster than before, and have their own 'special' cable, and some IDE slots on the mobo only have one slot rated as fast.

(Did that come out right?) Can't think of the term. I'm back on SCSI now.

Glenn

 

[Gabriel_Lam]

Consider using BootVis to track what is loaded when, and how long it takes. Do a trace, then an optimize.
http://www.microsoft.com/hwdev/platf...ot/bootvis.asp
The boot time on my laptop (P3 1.13Ghz) actually only takes 22 seconds after I used bootvis. Not too bad considering how slow laptop hard drives are.

 

[Max Leung]

Thanks for the tip on Bootvis!

 

[Martin Fontaine]

Other than a crash last night (I woke up, hit Enter, moved the trackball, nothing - the screen saver won't wake, had to hit reset) it seems fine now. I rebooted after this morning's crash, and it booted fast. As for my other problems like mouse jerkiness and programs being extremely slow to start, they all seem to be gone for now.

As for the hard drives speeds mismatch my drives are:

Pri Mas: 60 Gigs Maxtor (C: 4GB (NTFS), D: 2GB (NTFS), E: 25GB (FAT32), F: 25GB (FAT32))
Pri Slv: Lite-On CD-RW 40x/12x/48x (G: 650/700MB)
Sec Mas: 27 Gigs Western Digital (H: 26GB (NTFS))

I think the concern about speeds (UDMA33/66/100) Is if 2 drives are on the same IDE channel and they are not in my case.

So far it seems to be fine, but I will watch closely, I hope the BIOS weirdness were a one-time glitch...

Also another problem which has bugged me with XP (Totally unrelated to the above) I use SUBST.EXE to map directories to fake drive letters. All my programs are installed on U: which is (For now) a sub-directory of E:. Sometimes (Not always) the U: drive won't be "created" before the programs at startup are run and therefore they do not start. Is there a way to ensure that the BAT file that runs the SUBST commands run BEFORE anything else? Before logon if possible. For now, my work around is to log off, and log back on since logging off won't destroy the subst that was created on the previous log on.

 

[DaveGTP]

My understanding with IDE set ups is that running a HD with a CD drive as a slave is not recommended. I believe this has to do with CD drive support of Ultra ATA. Is the Maxtor drive an Ultra ATA/133 or Ultra ATA/100? I've heard that sometimes CD drives have trouble running on the same cable as a fast Ultra ATA HD. I've heard that it can sometimes cause serious problems. I would definitely suggest hooking the HDs as primary master/slave and the CD drive as secondary master! You should really have them hooked that way for optimum CD-burning performance anyway. Or, as a test procedure, I defintely agree with Max. Unhook all cables except your boot drive, set the jumpers as Master on the boot drive, and boot up with just that drive and test for problems.