Serious CPU or Hard Disk Problem

[Guest]

...at least I *think* it's the CPU or hard drive. If I do anything that involves disk thrashing, or even adding a file to the zip ( it has to search the drive to do that ) it goes along fine for about 5 seconds, then it stops for about 25, then starts again, and then pauses for another 5-10, and it's laggy the whole time, CD installs that used to take 5 minutes take half an hour now, and copying large files is a true nightmare.
I've tried defragging, cleaning my registry, everything, and it's still lagging like crazy. Has anyone had/heard of this problem before? Can I fix it any way other than reformatting? I really don't want to do that again...

Also, I have an ASUS A7V KT133A motherboard, and sometimes when my system encouners an error, it resets the bios to "safe mode" and lowers my CPU multiplier and frequency, as well as my DRAM frequency, and sets my PCI bus to 33. It's been reset twice now, and I really don't know what my clock multiplier and frequency should be for a standard AMD Athlon 1.33 GHz processor anymore, and I think I've got the wrong settings, though I have brought it back to 1.33 by setting the CPU frequency to 133 and leaving the clock mult. at 10.0, but I could have sworn the clock multiplier was higher and the frequency was lower before the first time this happened. Does anyone know what the default multiplier and frequency is for my processor?

My system is as follows:
AMD Athlon 1.33 ghz processor
512 megs of PC133 CAS-2 RAM
GeForce3 Standard ( 64 megs, not Ti500 )
SBLive X-Gamer 5.1 Sound Card
Maxtor 15GB 7200 RPM Hard Drive
ASUS 50x CD

 

[pike]

You know, when a prob like that starts you must ask yourself: what have i changed, modified, upgraded, installed or whatever just before these things started. Or someone else in your family. If it is totally out of the blue, then it is a different matter all together and will be more difficult to pinpoint. But , really think of any changes just before this started !

My two cents !

Danny, Britney Spears you are DYNAMITE, OPPS!

Electric coolaid for everyone, except me, never touch the stuff !

 

[camieabz]

KT<b>133</b> mobo
PC-<b>133</b> RAM
CPU = [work it out] MHz


<b><font color=blue>~scribble~</font color=blue></b> <A HREF="http://www.ud.com/home.htm" target="_new">Help cure cancer.</A>

 

[pike]

Let's see if i understand :

FSB 133 + PC-133 = 266/FSBPC + -266/FSBPC = 0

EUREKA , Good lord i got it, i got it

Anonymous,
Here he goes again


Electric coolaid for everyone, except me, never touch the stuff !

 

[camieabz]

Heh.

I suppose I worded it a bit wrong.

The mobo FSB is 133MHz, as is the memory. Both are double pumped which gives the DDR @ 266MHz.

The CPU should run at 133MHz to give the desired effect.

<b><font color=blue>~scribble~</font color=blue></b> <A HREF="http://www.ud.com/home.htm" target="_new">Help cure cancer.</A>

 

[pike]

Just fooling around, of course.
You know, this double pumping of memory is over my head.
At the moment i'm on my trustworthy P55T2P4 socket 7, with single pumped EDO 60 nano (at 83 Mhz however whitch i am proud of). Ah , we must be proud of our machines, right.
Some people it's their car. Others their whatever. Myself it's my P55T2P4. :redface:

Danny

Electric coolaid for everyone, except me, never touch the stuff !

 

[Crashman]

Maybe a problem with your soundcard on that chipset?

What's the frequency, Kenneth?

 

[pike]

At least someone in this forum seems to always be sane of mind. Thank goodness !

Danny

Electric coolaid for everyone, except me, never touch the stuff !

 

[Guest]

I really haven't changed much, it just started..happening, heh. This is getting really annoying, I may just yet have to reformat. Ugh.

 

[peteb]

Well, generally an ASUS board will not default CPU and FSB frequency unless it fails to POST. If it is losing the settings during normal operation (pc hangs/crashes, then restarts cleanly 1st time) but has the wrong setting then I would expect that either your CMOS battery is dead, or there is something shorting your CMOS reset contacts.

Have you moved or opened your system recently that might have disturbed something?

As for system lagging and general slowness - do a scan of your system using an up to date virus checker. If you have an anti-virus app. installed try temporarily suspending it and try again.

Possibly your swapfile/pagefile is very fragmented. You csn try creating it on a new disk partition if possible, but set it to a fixed size (max/min the same) so that it is created as 1 single file. Defrag does not generally defragment pagefiles and they will have a system impact.

-* <font color=red> !! S O L D !! </font color=red> *-
To the gentleman in the pink Tutu

 

[kusek]

Do you have applications running in the backround? I would recommend a format and clean install of everthing if you continue to have trouble finding the problem.

 

[LoveGuRu]

bad sectors?
did you run scandisk?

<font color=green>
*******
*K.I.S.S*
*(k)eep (I)t (S)imple (S)tupid*
*******
</font color=green>

 

[Matisaro]

The defaults of your cpu are 10x133.

"The Cash Left In My Pocket,The BEST Benchmark"
No Overclock+stock hsf=GOOD!

 

[Guest]

Hmm, doesn't defrag defragment page files/swap files if you're running in safe mode when you start defrag? And no, I do not have background programs running, I keep my tasks down to just Explorer and systray.

 

[phsstpok]

Just a stab in the dark but...

I just installed an LG 48X CD-ROM and I was about to throw it out the window. It was spinning up for no reason at all, about once every 20 to 40 seconds. Each time it did this it froze any open window for about as many seconds. Only open windows were affected, not the mouse cursor nor anything on the taskbar. (Very annoying!)

I was running out of ideas when finally I reinstalled George Breese's PCI Latency hack. Now the CD-ROM is working great. (I have no idea how this fixed anything).

Another thing that can cause lagging (but nothing as severe as that which you described or my problem above) are not having DMA enabled on hard drives, CD-ROMs, etc. (Don't enable DMA on devices that don't support it).

Having Video RAM Caching enabled in your BIOS can cause momentary video lagging, (more like stuttering). The slower the processor the more pronounced this can be. (It is much worse with a Duron and its small cache).

I read about the last problem <A HREF="http://hwfaq.overclockersonline.com/dbase.php?catid=18" target="_new">here</A>, article, "Info/Tweak - Video RAM Caching". (However, the link to that article seems to be dead). The explanation was better than I can do but as I understood it, Video Ram Caching attempts to cache local video memory. That memory is on the video card which is across the AGP port relative to the CPU. Since data has to cross that same bus, which is very slow, in order to be written to video memory there is no point in wasting CPU Cache memory. That very valuable cache memory is better suited serving fast main system memory.

I confirmed the stuttering issue on my own Duron system (1007mhz) but can just barely see it on my 1425mhz Athlon system. I think that problem would also be worse with a 64MB video card vs 32MB card. More memory would waste more CPU cache.

You can get the PCI Latency patch at <A HREF="http://www.viahardware.com/" target="_new">VIAHardware</A>.

Read about the patch and what it's purpose is at the link below.

<A HREF="http://www.viahardware.com/686b_1.shtm" target="_new">http://www.viahardware.com/686b_1.shtm</A>



<b>We are all beta testers!</b>

 

[Guest]

I ran Scandisk, it didn't find anything. I'm looking into that PCI Latency program now...