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Thread ID: 33124 2003-05-07 23:21:00 Hard Disk Problem for the Tech Guys i-gordon (962) Press F1
Post ID Timestamp Content User
142219 2003-05-07 23:21:00 First a bit of history. I have a P3, 733Mhz, WindowsME, 20Ghz Maxtor 7200rpm drive. Over a period of about 2 months it got slower & slower. I tried all the remedys I could find on Google & F1, ScanDisk & Defrags by the dozen, No Errors. Finally I bought a new Computer, transfered all my data to the new machine. Now I want to get the old ME working properly so I bought Partition Magic. Reformated & partitioned the disk into C:8Gb & D: 12Gb. Clean reinstalled WindowsME, Norton System Works 2002, Outlook, Word 2000, Publisher, & Excell with many defrags in between, then all the updates into C: and about 100Mb of assorted data into D:. The damm thing still runs as slow as ever. I can eat breakfast while it boots up. I downloaded a utility called Fresh Devices and ran the benchmark test on the hard drive. The results were all OK except the read/write test that showed the read speed to be extremely poor & the write speed about 5 times faster than the next best. Im not really clued up enough to know what to make of all this, any expert advice as to what might be wrong would be appreciated.
Ian Gordon
i-gordon (962)
142220 2003-05-07 23:26:00 check DMA is enabled for the hardrives (and cd drives to).

did you install the motherboard drivers?
tweak'e (174)
142221 2003-05-07 23:32:00 DMA enabled way back thanks anyway.
Ian
i-gordon (962)
142222 2003-05-07 23:37:00 It's not Nortons Antivirus (part of systemworks) checking every file upon startup is it? B.M. (505)
142223 2003-05-07 23:39:00 Motherboard drivers. Would this show up in the device manager with the yellow ?
Ian
i-gordon (962)
142224 2003-05-07 23:41:00 Norton AV should have worked it way throught all the files by now almost 2 weeks ago. thanks anyway.
Ian
i-gordon (962)
142225 2003-05-08 01:04:00 >Motherboard drivers. Would this show up in the device manager with the yellow ?

no.

if in doubt just download the latest ones and install.
tweak'e (174)
142226 2003-05-08 02:33:00 Sounds like the HD itself is knackered and the heads need to jump all over the place to find good sectors to store the data.

I think there are programs that can check this out but not sure. If you slap a new drive in and the problem goes away then that is it.
Big John (551)
142227 2003-05-08 03:41:00 Scandisk will tell you have any bad sectors on the drive in the summary after running a test. If you haven't already, do a through test so it can pick up any undetected bad sectors.

If its not the hard drive, have a look at what rubbish the computer is loading at startup by going Start-run, entering MSCONFIG, then switch to the startup tab.
bmason (508)
142228 2003-05-08 05:36:00 Have done many thorough scandisk runs, takes about 16 hours, reports that the disk is OK no bad sectors, also done the msconfig thing one by one. Makes no difference. Even slow to boot in safe mode. Im going to reinstall the mainboard drivers, Ill report back tomorrow. thanks for the suggestions guys, Much appreciated.
Ian Gordon
i-gordon (962)
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