Re: very slow operation

Paul & Colette Daigneault wrote:

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
--
Elephant Boy Computers
www.elephantboycomputers.com
"Don't Panic!"
MS-MVP Windows - Shell/User
.

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