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TheDamned
Posts: 508
Location: Montréal,QC, Canada
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 Posted: Tue, 31st Jan 2006 03:55 Post subject: Real hardware gurus, step in. |
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First of all i'm no newbie in computer gears. I'm studying in eletronic engineering and been "playing" with computers since i'm 10 (20 now)... If you're an expert please take the time to read this, i'm sick and tired of this bug... Pardon my english, it's not my 1st langage.
Anyways, the situation:
I have two HDs on this computer, the first one is a 60 gigs WD where I run all my apps\games\windows, etc. The second one is a 200 gigs Maxtor that I bought ~ 1 year ago, that has all my downloads,mp3z,vids, warez, etc. CPU is 2 years old, it's a A64 3200+ with 2gigs of ram and GF6800 vid card on an Asus K8V-SE running on WinXP SP2 updated to death.
The problem:
Not sure when it started, maybe 6 months ago or so. I download alot of craps and plays with big .rars alot. At one random time, I noticed a big slow down when extracting .rars. So I figured that was a normal windows bug, rebooted windows, tried to extract agian, boom, took like 4x longer then before. I tried again with another file, same thing but during the extraction, my mouse "quitted" the mouse pointer. I could still move the mouse around the desktop but the pointer wasnt following. I rebooted, it came back to normal. So I tried diffferent stuff and found that when i'm *trying* to do things when it's extracting at a turtle speed the pointers just leave the mouse randomly and never comes back until I reboot Windows. It's damn frustrating. And I noticed tho that when I scroll down the files in any big directories, i.e.: mp3s dir, it takes a noticable time to load the little winamp icon on each files, same with my download dirs and all the differents icons. Basically, the whole 200gigs hd is slowed. So I tough, the HD might be fucked up or it's a Windows bug... I formated the C: and didnt touch the D: (since it's my downloads\mp3s,e tc.) To my surprise, the D: (200gigs) drive worked perfectly during ~ 2months again, then bang, the slow downs came back again... I re-formated to be sure, no slow downs during a while then bang it came back all of a sudden...
The interrogations:
Well, it seems that it's not an hardware-realted bug since the formats corrects the slowdowns on teh 200gigs everytime. It's probly a "known" bug with the K8V-SE or Windows or anycraps like that... If anyone has any solutions or ever encounter that problem, please leave one. It's damn frustrating when you can't do anything else while extracting a file\watching a movie or listing mp3z because your pointer is gonna "quit" the mouse...
Thanks for reading guys...
Tom.
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| Posted: Tue, 31st Jan 2006 10:29 Post subject: |
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Hmm.. Lemme take a stab.. I've been "playing" with computers for about 23 years now..
K8V sounds like it has a VIA chipset..
VIA chipsets really are not that good. Which drivers are you running? The ones built into Windows or are you using the VIA 4 in 1 drivers? You might try switching around to see which one performs better.. Are you using the promise controller at all? It will probably provide much better performance than the VIA southbridge.
Are the hard drives EIDE or SATA? If they are EIDE, are both drives on the same interface as master/slave?
I ask because EIDE drives on the same interface have to not only share bandwidth on the same ATA bus, but commands to the drives can only be issued to one drive at a time, so if both drives are trying to respond to commands, one drive will be waiting for the other to complete. That's one of the reasons that SCSI kicks so much ass. SCSI can have mutiple command channels open to each drive.
That's also why you would get better performance by putting each drive on its own ATA interface. Perhaps put the 60 gig on the primary interface all by itself, then put the 200 gig drive on the secondary interface and then put your optical drives on the third ATA interface.. According to what I've seen, the K8V-SE has 3 ATA and 2 SATA interfaces..
It takes more cabling, but the performance will be much faster with each hard drive on its own interface.
Also, I know this is silly to ask, but how often do you defrag.. Extracting RARs, deleting files, extracting more will lead to fragmentation very quickly..
derwood -
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TheDamned
Posts: 508
Location: Montréal,QC, Canada
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| Posted: Tue, 31st Jan 2006 15:19 Post subject: |
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| derwood wrote: | Hmm.. Lemme take a stab.. I've been "playing" with computers for about 23 years now..
K8V sounds like it has a VIA chipset..
VIA chipsets really are not that good. Which drivers are you running? The ones built into Windows or are you using the VIA 4 in 1 drivers? You might try switching around to see which one performs better.. Are you using the promise controller at all? It will probably provide much better performance than the VIA southbridge.
Are the hard drives EIDE or SATA? If they are EIDE, are both drives on the same interface as master/slave?
I ask because EIDE drives on the same interface have to not only share bandwidth on the same ATA bus, but commands to the drives can only be issued to one drive at a time, so if both drives are trying to respond to commands, one drive will be waiting for the other to complete. That's one of the reasons that SCSI kicks so much ass. SCSI can have mutiple command channels open to each drive.
That's also why you would get better performance by putting each drive on its own ATA interface. Perhaps put the 60 gig on the primary interface all by itself, then put the 200 gig drive on the secondary interface and then put your optical drives on the third ATA interface.. According to what I've seen, the K8V-SE has 3 ATA and 2 SATA interfaces..
It takes more cabling, but the performance will be much faster with each hard drive on its own interface.
Also, I know this is silly to ask, but how often do you defrag.. Extracting RARs, deleting files, extracting more will lead to fragmentation very quickly..
derwood - |
The HDS are EDIDE, I doubt it's because they'r both IDE's, I mean it worked flawlessly for a damn while and it just started to slowdown on the second hd. When I format, it dissapears for a while, I really doubt it's hardware related problems, more of a driver issues somewhere 
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pancake
Posts: 1091
Location: England
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| Posted: Tue, 31st Jan 2006 19:31 Post subject: |
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if it was a driver issue it would be there all the time, have you tried checking the volumes for errors and defragging
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| Posted: Tue, 31st Jan 2006 19:51 Post subject: |
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Some things you could do (not in any particular order):
- Update your bios
- lower timings on your ram in bios (cas etc.)
- check both hd's if they are really fine with the corresponding tools from the manufacturer
- try new cabling on the ide drives (but i doubt it's the cabeling)
- run memtest86 to check your ram
- check if your capacitors are leaking on the motherboard
-check cpu temps while using winrar
Extracting huge rar files means a lot of load for the cpu, do you get these problems everytime the cpu has a high load or only while using winrar?
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TheDamned
Posts: 508
Location: Montréal,QC, Canada
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| Posted: Wed, 1st Feb 2006 01:00 Post subject: |
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| whoKnows wrote: |
Extracting huge rar files means a lot of load for the cpu, do you get these problems everytime the cpu has a high load or only while using winrar? |
Everytime I do something that ask transfers on the D: drive, so yes, when i'm extracing rars on the D: it's slowing down alot.
I took the same file, extracted it on the C: and it was perfect. I doubt it's the cpu.
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TheDamned
Posts: 508
Location: Montréal,QC, Canada
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| Posted: Wed, 1st Feb 2006 01:01 Post subject: |
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| pancake wrote: | | if it was a driver issue it would be there all the time, have you tried checking the volumes for errors and defragging |
It's "there" all the time since the problem came back ~ 1 month after the format.
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| Posted: Wed, 1st Feb 2006 06:48 Post subject: |
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First thing you need to do is check XP's Event Viewer:System and see if you have any errors.
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| Posted: Wed, 1st Feb 2006 07:04 Post subject: |
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Have you tried switching drivers? Perhaps to a newer VIA driver, or to the default Windows driver for the VT8237?
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| Posted: Wed, 1st Feb 2006 07:08 Post subject: |
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have you checked your jumper settings? sometimes cable select screws things up, master/slave usually better.
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TheDamned
Posts: 508
Location: Montréal,QC, Canada
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| Posted: Wed, 1st Feb 2006 20:43 Post subject: |
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I solved my problem guys.
I just uninstalled the driver of the primary IDE channel (wich contains both of my HDs) in the Device Manager thing then rebooted, so it reinstalled the default and everything is working now!
Thanks for all your inputs guys.
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