very slow operation

[Paul & Colette Daigneault]

I have recently installed XP on a new 80 GIG HD as Drive F. The new HD is the master and the old HD- a 20 GIG- is the slave. I have installed program files on the new drive and all my own files are on the C drive.

My system has been running really slow i.e. After conecting to my ISP I click on OE. it takes a couple of seconds or more to open up. I click on WORD and I virtually have time to get a coffee before it opens up.

I went to my msconfig to check the startups. There are a whole slew of applications checked off to start. I unchecked them all and checked four or five of what I figure are essential i.e. antivirus, spybot, adaware, and printer. That hasn't shown any marked improvement in response time.

Could it have anything to do with the fact that my C Drive is the slave and my new HD, running all the applications is the F Drive? Previously my C drive (as master) carried everything and a 4 GIG drive was for backups as the slave drive.

My system processor is a 1.2 GiG AMD Duron with 512 MEGs RAM with over half available.

Any other tricks I can try?


Paul Daigneault
Ottawa, ON.Canada

 

[LVTravel]

Make sure you have installed all chipset drivers for the motherboard (get from manufacturer's web site), network card, video, etc. This should speed up your system.

Also, turn off HTML text for newsgroups in your version of Outlook Express please.

I have recently installed XP on a new 80 GIG HD as Drive F. The new HD is the master and the old HD- a 20 GIG- is the slave. I have installed program files on the new drive and all my own files are on the C drive.

My system has been running really slow i.e. After conecting to my ISP I click on OE. it takes a couple of seconds or more to open up. I click on WORD and I virtually have time to get a coffee before it opens up.

I went to my msconfig to check the startups. There are a whole slew of applications checked off to start. I unchecked them all and checked four or five of what I figure are essential i.e. antivirus, spybot, adaware, and printer. That hasn't shown any marked improvement in response time.

Could it have anything to do with the fact that my C Drive is the slave and my new HD, running all the applications is the F Drive? Previously my C drive (as master) carried everything and a 4 GIG drive was for backups as the slave drive.

My system processor is a 1.2 GiG AMD Duron with 512 MEGs RAM with over half available.

Any other tricks I can try?


Paul Daigneault
Ottawa, ON.Canada

 

[Malke]

I have recently installed XP on a new 80 GIG HD as Drive F. The new HD
is the master and the old HD- a 20 GIG- is the slave. I have installed
program files on the new drive and all my own files are on the C
drive.

My system has been running really slow i.e. After conecting to my ISP
I click on OE. it takes a couple of seconds or more to open up. I
click on WORD and I virtually have time to get a coffee before it
opens up.

I went to my msconfig to check the startups. There are a whole slew of
applications checked off to start. I unchecked them all and checked
four or five of what I figure are essential i.e. antivirus, spybot,
adaware, and printer. That hasn't shown any marked improvement in
response time.

Could it have anything to do with the fact that my C Drive is the
slave and my new HD, running all the applications is the F Drive?
Previously my C drive (as master) carried everything and a 4 GIG drive
was for backups as the slave drive.

My system processor is a 1.2 GiG AMD Duron with 512 MEGs RAM with over
half available.

You don't have a fast machine, but it shouldn't be that slow. Having the
new drive as F: and the old drive C: shouldn't make any difference.
Here are some suggestions:

1. Always make sure the computer is virus/malware-free:

http://www.elephantboycomputers.com/page2.html#Removing_Malware

2. You've already used msconfig to minimize what runs in the background,
but here are some links about doing that just for thoroughness:

Clean boot in Windows XP - http://support.microsoft.com/kb/310353
Clean-boot advanced troubleshooting in Windows XP -
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/316434
and How to Troubleshoot By Using the Msconfig Utility in Windows XP -
http://support.microsoft.com/?id=310560

3. Check to see if your hard drive is using PIO mode instead of some
flavor of DMA (which is what it sounds like). Here's a link to MVP
Hans-Georg Michna's information/fix for that:

http://www.michna.com/kb/WxDMA.htm

Malke

 

[Guest]

Check if the cache in your bios is enabled. Does booting into safe mode make
a difference?