New(er) PC "Woes"

[Dopefish7590]

Hello. Recently I've gotten a new computer with nothing on it, the specs were:

- 1.8 Ghz Pentium 4
- 512 MB of RAM
- 64 MB Video Card
- 6 GB Hard Drive (Yes Its small, but it was just for the system files)
- 20 GB Hard drive that I put in from my old computer (for anything other then system files)
- and a "Fine" Bus cord connecting to both my Hard Drives

And I am having the following problems:
1) First and foremost, it takes half an hour to boot into XP Home Edition on a fresh install...
2) My computer will not run an unbeleivable amount of things due to a "Runtime error".
3) Everything takes a long time to load, Whether it be Internet explorer or Windows explorer.

My thoughts are that it is the 6 GB Harddrive, that it cannot transfer data to the bus cord at a very fast speed, But I'm asking here first before I format my 20 GB Hard Drive to install the OS because I have no way of backing up my files other then on a flash drive. So... Is this the problem, or what other possibilities are there?

Thanks in advance.

[NutWrench]

Does your pagefile exist? How big is it?
Is DMA enabled on the hard drive?
Does the motherboard need some drivers installed?

[Inanimate Carbon Rod]

What is a "fine" bus cord? You mean ata cable?

Anyway, it could also easily be a ram problem. If it uses rambus memory, you might as well throw the computer away.


EDIT:
You can go to the HD manufacturer's site and download a utility that will tell you if the drive is bad. Similarly, you can do the same with Memtest86 for your ram.

[Dopefish7590]

Does your pagefile exist? How big is it?
Is DMA enabled on the hard drive?
Does the motherboard need some drivers installed?

- 2 GB Page file
- Dynamic Memory Access is enabled.
- No drivers needed.

What is a "fine" bus cord? You mean ata cable?

Anyway, it could also easily be a ram problem. If it uses rambus memory, you might as well throw the computer away.


EDIT:
You can go to the HD manufacturer's site and download a utility that will tell you if the drive is bad. Similarly, you can do the same with Memtest86 for your ram.

- 80 pin (Not sure what its called but its not SATA)
- No rambus memory, its DDR2.

- I will try theese test tools. Thank you.

[Scotty]

80 wire (40 pins, but with alternating ground wires to minimize crosstalk) would be for ATA/66 or faster. ATA/33 and PIO used a 40 wire cable.

A 6 gig hard drive is probably 10+ years old, and a 20 gig hard drive is probably 5-8 years old.

Even if your mainboard ATA controller supports ATA/100, those drives are probably ATA/66 or slower, particularly the 6 GB drive. If the 6 GB drive is ATA/33, it's no surprise Windows starts that slow. I'm surprised it can start at all.

Drives that old were meant to deal with the 50-150 meg Windows directories of Windows 95/98. The Windows directory for Windows XP is more like half a gig to a few gigs.

[NutWrench]

Maybe it's a BIOS setting for the hard drive? Look for a setting called "32-bit transfer mode" and see if it's enabled. There's might also be a BIOS setting called "compatability mode" and "enhanced mode." If you have Windows XP installed, it should be set to enhanced mode.

[Wamplet]

definitely check the drive.

Usually when the OS runs slow and it boots up slow, it means there is a problem with the drive. :o

Edit: also, you might want to consider doing one of the following:

After you set up the OS on your 20gb drive, shut it down and then hook up your old drive as a slave, so you can easily transfer the data to the new drive.

or

You can buy a USB IDE transfer cable kit.

I use this one for IDE hds at work. works great. I also have a little HD 2.5 ide adapter to put on the end of it, in case i need to back up laptop hds.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16812107114

You can also buy a SATA/IDE combo adapter as well, although i normally have one separate for each hd type, because i use them so much. It keeps me from wearing one out. I've gone through 2 over the past 3 years, although I can blame my co-workers for screwing them up. Bent pins, etc. :o

[Dopefish7590]

Guys, the 6 GB Hard Drive is my suspision for that very reason... I know its old, I just needed confirmation before formatting the 20 GB Hard Drive, As I said in my first post I have no way of backing up the entire contents... The test programs were OK, and the BIOS had nothing wrong in it. The drives are ok from a visual prespective, and there is nothing wrong with the bus cords (No bends or cinks). So is it safe to conclude that I am going to have to format the 20 GB Hard Drive? If so I really will try to find something to backup the PC with.


Also about the "runtime errors" what is wrong here... is it the Hard Drive again, or is something faulty that I have overlooked?

I have:
- Visually inspected the hardware and the interior of my case, no problem there...
- Run test programs, No problems found, the programs I used were:
Scandisk
Chkdisk
Ad-Aware
AVG
Mem386
Maxtor tools
Drivecheck
- I have installed patches for XP that may have been the problem with the errors.
- Reinstalled numerous times, even to a different folder a few times. (like C:\Winblows)
- Used SFC, Msconfig, Sysedit, and Regedit, to check for problems.
- Changed bus cords.
- Tried fresh(er) RAM albeit smaller but different sticks in case one of mine was faulty.
- Booted into DOS and made a batch file to check all my files to see if they were intact.
- Used an emulator on the 20 GB Hard Drive to see if my processor was ok.

None of theese steps yeilded any problems.

[NutWrench]

What does the Device Manager have to say about your hard drive?
Is write caching enabled on it?
http://img150.imageshack.us/img150/1958/cache2bf8.png

[Scotty]

Do you have a friend with a DVD-R drive? If so, you may be able to hook up your 20 GB drive there (this will be easier if you can get hold of an ATA-to-USB transfer adapter like Wamplet has), back the 20 GB drive up onto a few DVDs, verify the data is good, and then you'll be free to format the 20 GB drive.

[Dopefish7590]

I made a deal with a friend, so now I have a 40 GB Hard Drive... Now I can backup all my stuff and install Windows on it, unfourtunatly I don't have my Windows XP CD with me at the moment so after I burn yet another copy of Fedora 8, I will install this on my computer untill I get my CD back (No my friend doesn't have it. In case you interpreted that my friend got my XP CD for this Hard Drive.).

@Nutwrech:
Sorry, I forgot I also checked the Device Manager for problems... So I didnt add it to my little list... Anyway, yes "Write Caching" is enabled.

[Kevin Wolff]

Installing new OSs on old hard drives is funny. Once I installed Win2k on an Athlon XP 2000+ with 256MB RAM and a 2GB, 4500rpm, PIO-4 hard drive...bootup was hilarious, about a third of the speed of the same system with a newer drive.