Once an hour hard drive access delay

[Guest]

Hi, I've written a small Visual C++ DOS window program for a special project
that continoulsly access (read or write a fixed file length) addon hard
drives attached to the SATA port of the motherboard or an addon SATA
controller, it measures and records access time of each read command sent to
them.

Typically, each access is about 50ms in latency which is what I expect. But
exactly once an hour on the hour of the system boot, I get a couple of access
delays that is in the order of 150 to 300ms. This is seen on all the drives
being measured.

Don't see this on FireWire or USB disks, just SATA connected drives. Have
not tested PATA or other devices yet.

So here is the question, is there anything that you guys can think of that I
might be able to turn off on XP that could contribute to this? I've disabled
System Update check and does not help. Anything thing else?

Asunga.

 

[Guest]

Most xp services are used,however to see a list from intel,go
to:http://www.intel.com/cd/ids/developer/asmo-na/eng/189869.htm?prn=Y
Page 6,this configuration & stopped services was applied for testing,one can
stop as listed,and restart as its needed....

 

[David Starr]

Most xp services are used,however to see a list from intel,go
to:http://www.intel.com/cd/ids/developer/asmo-na/eng/189869.htm?prn=Y
Page 6,this configuration & stopped services was applied for testing,one can
stop as listed,and restart as its needed....

We used to see this kinda thing when we were doing video capture some
years ago. Turned out that the Windows handicapped access support was
doing some sluggish check of something or other that locked up the
machine long enough to drop a few frames of video. We fixed it by
getting into Install and Remove Programs and removing all handicapped
support. While you ar at it, get rid of indexing services, IIS, windows
messenger and anything else you don't need. Then get into
Administrative services and turn off as many as possible. Be careful
with services, disabling some will kill Windows so hard it won't boot.
There are good websites listing good and bad services which will turn up
for a quick google. Try "Services XP" for a search object.

David Starr