VERY SLOW hard drive and baffling sound skips

[syn]

Hi,

I just bought a new case, motherboard (K7VT4A) and an AMD chip. It's a
budget system, but still, not too shabby. Instead of buying new hard
drives I just took the two ones I had, C: and D: from my old computer,
including my 3d card and plugged them in.

Due to a **** up on the suppliers part the driver CD was unreadable so
I downloaded the drives and burnt them on CD from another computer.

Then my problems started. I solved some of them, but this one I'm just
lost on.

For some reason the D: drive (a recently purchased item) was running so
****ing slowly. Also playing mp3's was practically impossible as they
skipped and took ages to load, but I figured that must be related to
the drive problem since they're all on that drive. For some reason the
C: drive was working just fine.

I couldn't figure out why and tried a bunch of stuff, rebooted and then
found the DMA checkbox which when I unchecked sped things up again. But
still not by much. I'm still getting skipped sound when I play music,
games or anything. I reinstalled every driver I could think of but that
didn't solve anything.

My drives are still slow (2.6mbs burst speed!! - they're on the same
IDE cable - my CD/DVD drives are on cable two) and nothing loads as
quickly as it did on my older sytem. Also when I play games frame rates
are really slow since the sound keeps skipping. Some games won't even
run - they'll just freeze! Except the ones on the C: drive..hmmm...they
run fine.

Could it be that my sound problem is related to my slow hard drive
problem? Are they two seperate problems and I'm on a wild goose chase
trying to solve both? How can I narrow it down. All drivers are the
latest. There are no conflicts being reported by the Device Manager. So
what gives?

I can't afford to upgrade any hardware so please don't tell me to. This
is got to be a solvable problem! It's got to be...

 

[old jon]

Hi,

I just bought a new case, motherboard (K7VT4A) and an AMD chip. It's a
budget system, but still, not too shabby. Instead of buying new hard
drives I just took the two ones I had, C: and D: from my old computer,
including my 3d card and plugged them in.

Due to a **** up on the suppliers part the driver CD was unreadable so
I downloaded the drives and burnt them on CD from another computer.

Then my problems started. I solved some of them, but this one I'm just
lost on.

For some reason the D: drive (a recently purchased item) was running so
****ing slowly. Also playing mp3's was practically impossible as they
skipped and took ages to load, but I figured that must be related to
the drive problem since they're all on that drive. For some reason the
C: drive was working just fine.

I couldn't figure out why and tried a bunch of stuff, rebooted and then
found the DMA checkbox which when I unchecked sped things up again. But
still not by much. I'm still getting skipped sound when I play music,
games or anything. I reinstalled every driver I could think of but that
didn't solve anything.

My drives are still slow (2.6mbs burst speed!! - they're on the same
IDE cable - my CD/DVD drives are on cable two) and nothing loads as
quickly as it did on my older sytem. Also when I play games frame rates
are really slow since the sound keeps skipping. Some games won't even
run - they'll just freeze! Except the ones on the C: drive..hmmm...they
run fine.

Could it be that my sound problem is related to my slow hard drive
problem? Are they two seperate problems and I'm on a wild goose chase
trying to solve both? How can I narrow it down. All drivers are the
latest. There are no conflicts being reported by the Device Manager. So
what gives?

I can't afford to upgrade any hardware so please don't tell me to. This
is got to be a solvable problem! It's got to be...

Try copying some music to your C: How does it play then ?. Is your D:
definitely set up as a slave drive ?. Does the system run well with D:
disconnected ?.
best wishes..OJ

 

[MurK]

Hi Syn,

A few things to check

Are the drives set properly to master and slave?

Is the cable an 80 pin one? this will allow faster transfer rates as they
are designed with a grounded wire of each signal one so reducing noise

Are the drives correctly detected during bootup/in the bios check the
messages on boot, you can press the pause key to halt the system but you
will have to be quick.. and press any other to resume boot

Let us know what happens

MurK

http://www.know-now.org.uk Technology discussion...

 

[kony]

Hi,

I just bought a new case, motherboard (K7VT4A) and an AMD chip. It's a
budget system, but still, not too shabby. Instead of buying new hard
drives I just took the two ones I had, C: and D: from my old computer,
including my 3d card and plugged them in.

Due to a **** up on the suppliers part the driver CD was unreadable so
I downloaded the drives and burnt them on CD from another computer.

Get the newest Via 4-in-1 driver from
http://www.viaarena.com
Do likewise with the other drivers, any that you can find
direct from the chipset manufacturers are a good idea.

Then my problems started. I solved some of them, but this one I'm just
lost on.

For some reason the D: drive (a recently purchased item) was running so
****ing slowly. Also playing mp3's was practically impossible as they
skipped and took ages to load, but I figured that must be related to
the drive problem since they're all on that drive. For some reason the
C: drive was working just fine.

MP3 is a VERY low bitrate, even a drive running in PIO mode
should be more than fast enough. I suspect you have more
problems than just HDD performance.

You might consider flashing the latest motherboard bios and
then (with AC shut off) clear CMOS. Then for the time
being, set only the FSB and any other manditory bios
settings, for the time being not trying to tweak bios
setting if you had been previously.

I couldn't figure out why and tried a bunch of stuff, rebooted and then
found the DMA checkbox which when I unchecked sped things up again. But
still not by much. I'm still getting skipped sound when I play music,
games or anything. I reinstalled every driver I could think of but that
didn't solve anything.

What other cards (PCI) do you have installed?
For the time being you might consider removing anything not
critical to booting the OS and retrying the MP3s. Since a
sound card is involved here (or are you using integrated
sound?), move the sound card to another PCI slot.

My drives are still slow (2.6mbs burst speed!! - they're on the same
IDE cable - my CD/DVD drives are on cable two) and nothing loads as
quickly as it did on my older sytem. Also when I play games frame rates
are really slow since the sound keeps skipping. Some games won't even
run - they'll just freeze! Except the ones on the C: drive..hmmm...they
run fine.

You did install the Via 4-in-1 driver pack already, yes?

Could it be that my sound problem is related to my slow hard drive
problem?

Yes, or even that a sound problem is causing other system
performance issues which effect HDD throughput.

Are they two seperate problems and I'm on a wild goose chase
trying to solve both? How can I narrow it down. All drivers are the
latest. There are no conflicts being reported by the Device Manager. So
what gives?

Check Task Manager for CPU utilization.

I can't afford to upgrade any hardware so please don't tell me to. This
is got to be a solvable problem! It's got to be...

You didn't tell us what software you're running.

Check Device Manager, the drives (win9x) or controller
(win2k/xp) and have them set to DMA mode.

 

[DaveW]

Not good. WHENEVER you change the motherboard that has been used with a
harddrive that has the OS on it, you MUST reformat the harddrive and do a
fresh install of the OS. Otherwise, as you found out, you get Registry
errors and data corruption in your system. You CANNOT change the
motherboard and then just plug your old harddrive with the OS on it into the
motherboard.