Harddrive slowness problems

[Xanthorf]

For quite some while now I've had some problems with my PC being rather slow. This is especially annoying in games where my fps is constantly changing from high to 10 in seconds, making most games unplayable.
First I thought it might be a virus, but after some serious virus/trojan/spyware-scanning and nothing changed I dismissed that possibility.

But I knew I've had this problem before, but I just couldn't remember what is was until now.
On both my harddrives, primary and secondary IDE channels are running UDMA2 on both device 0 and 1. And I think at least device 0 should run UDMA5 according to a friend of mine. Now the problem is that I can reinstall primary and secondary IDE channels so my pc speeds up for awhile until it gets slow again, but I don't know how to fix it so it doesn't go slow again.

Any help would be welcome.

 

[khha4113]

Can you change them manually to UDMA5 in Windows device manager? Is your chipset drivers up-to-date?

 

[Xanthorf]

No, can't change it to UDMA5. Can only change transfer mode (pio only / udma if available).
Don't know if I have the latest chipset drivers. I'm using the one that came with the motherboard cd.

 

[khha4113]

Then I suggest you download the latest chipset driver for your motherboard.
You can also fix (probably) this by manually setup your drive in BIOS. Go to your comp's BIOS (usually by pressing <b>Delete</b> key when you boot your comp), <b>Standard CMOS feature</b>, select your HD (IDE Primary Mater or something like that), and set it as <b>Manual</b> and its access mode is <b><font color=red>LBA</b></font color=red>. By setting that, Windows now can use ATA100 (or UDMA5) for your HD.

 

[Xanthorf]

I installed the newest chipset driver I could find. Nothing changed.
And in BIOS I couldn't change HD to Manual and access mode to LBA. Different BIOS or something.
But under Primary IDE Master menu these things stood:
LBA Mode: Supported
Pio Mode: 4
Async DMA: MultiWord DMA-2
Ultra DMA: Ultra DMA-2

Type: Auto (auto/disabled)
LBA/Large Mode: Auto (auto/disabled)
Block (Multi-Sector Transfer) Mode: Auto (auto/disabled)
SMART Monitoring: Auto (auto/disabled
DMA Mode: Auto (lists lots of DMA modes - MWDMA - SWDMA(?)- UDMA(max2)
32Bit Data Transfer: Disabled (enabled/disabled)

Probably should have mentioned this in first post:
Mainboard: Asus P4P800 Deluxe
Primary IDE Channel:
Main HD (80GB) (2 partitions: 60gb-20gb)
Backup HD (20GB)
Secondary IDE Channel:
CD Writer
DVD Writer

I read the HDD FAQ, so I'm gonna try and unplug my backup HD and see if it gets any better.

Hope this can help you work out something.

 

[Codesmith]

"Ultra DMA: Ultra DMA-2"

I think you need to have mode 5 enabled in the BIOS, as well as the correct chipset drivers & setting in windows.

 

[Xanthorf]

Thats the problem, since I have the newest chipset drivers (as far as I can see) and I can't change it to UDMA-5 in bios.