Snake
Missing, Presumed Dead
+1,046|7022|England

Right, so, the other day my HD started playing up. It would turn on and off for about 5 seconds and then be fine for a while before it'd do it again. I was playing BF2 at the time, and I crashed a chopper a few times as a result. The gunner wasnt pleased

Since then, everything is taking a lot longer to do. XP takes ages to load (about 3minutes - used to be within 30seconds...) and BF2 has taken 10-15 minutes to load a map. It used to take 1 loop through one of the songs on load, now it takes about 4-6 in comparison....
It has also affected my fps, not by much, but it is noticable (mainly when in jets and helis).
As a result, 24/7 servers are now all I can do - preferably maps with 99 rounds before map reload (lol).

First off, I thought to try a defrag. Last time I defragged my main HD was about a year ago (its an 80Gb), and it said it was 40% fragmented!! So I did it, it took 14 hours to do (9pm - 11am next day).

Loaded BF2, no difference.

I just thought that the HD must be bollocksed so I went to backup EF, AF and patch 1.41 onto CD to save redownloading them. Went into Nero, set my usual burn speed of 40x and when it started to burn it said:
"Cannot write at 40x speed, writing at 24x speed since the source is too slow".
i.e. the hard-disk.

So, I tried putting in a spare HD we got (my old one) which also used to burn @ 40x speed no problem. Put it in, installed XP and Nero, went to burn a CD...same message came up saying it could only write @ 24x speed.

I can safely say that it is not the hard disk that is the problem.
Im no wiz, but im assuming its the motherboard or maybe a bus or something. Ive looked through all of the BIOS settings and nothing strikes me as obvious.

I dont want to go buying a new motherboard or whatever if thats not the problem, so does anyone have any ideas on what might have caused this, why its happened and how to fix it?
Agent_Dung_Bomb
Member
+302|7192|Salt Lake City

If your drive is PATA, go into Device Manager and look under the hard disk controllers.  Go into the properties of whichever controller the drive is attached (primary or secondary), and then into the properties of that controller.  On the Advanced tab there will be an option for the drive mode.  Make sure it is set to DMA if available, and not PIO mode.

Also, if you are using the same cable with both drives, try swaping out the cable, but make sure to use the 80 wire type.
The Stillhouse Kid
Licensed Televulcanologist
+126|7098|Deep In The South Of Texas
Is your motherboard a NVidia chipset by chance? If it is there's problems with the NVidia IDE drivers.
Agent_Dung_Bomb
Member
+302|7192|Salt Lake City

Yeah, definitely don't install the nVidia IDE drivers.  They suck so bad there is no word in the English language to describe it.  Just use the Windows IDE drivers.
Snake
Missing, Presumed Dead
+1,046|7022|England

Thanks for the replies fellas.

Firstly, Ive had this PC for just under 3 years now and never had a problem with it before. It was custom built by a friend of my dads.
2.8Ghz AMD Athalon (running at 2.1)
512MB RAM
128Mb Radeon 9600 graphics card

I checked out Device Manager on the Primary HD and transfer mode is set to "DMA If Available".
Although, in the box below for "Current Transfer Mode"...it is on "PIO Mode".
(whatever that means)

The motherboard is actually this one here:
http://www.epox.com.tw/eng/products_content.php?ps=230
So yes, it is an nvidea chipset.

However I can guarantee that I havent installed any drivers for a long long time for anything on my system. Im not sure if any IDE drivers were originally installed, and if they were... I dont see how they would suddenly start causing problems now!!
Agent_Dung_Bomb
Member
+302|7192|Salt Lake City

Snake wrote:

Thanks for the replies fellas.

Firstly, Ive had this PC for just under 3 years now and never had a problem with it before. It was custom built by a friend of my dads.
2.8Ghz AMD Athalon (running at 2.1)
512MB RAM
128Mb Radeon 9600 graphics card

I checked out Device Manager on the Primary HD and transfer mode is set to "DMA If Available".
Although, in the box below for "Current Transfer Mode"...it is on "PIO Mode".
(whatever that means)

The motherboard is actually this one here:
http://www.epox.com.tw/eng/products_content.php?ps=230
So yes, it is an nvidea chipset.

However I can guarantee that I havent installed any drivers for a long long time for anything on my system. Im not sure if any IDE drivers were originally installed, and if they were... I dont see how they would suddenly start causing problems now!!
Since PATA supports up to 2 drives per channel, you will have two options in the Advanced tab; one for the master (drive 0) and one for the slave (drive 1).  As long as the one with the drive attached is set to DMA mode, then you're fine.
joker3327
=IBF2=
+305|7054|Cheshire. UK
Could just be that the MB has given up the fight....

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