H
HeadScratcher7
A couple of months ago I had 2 different WinXP computers develop serious lag
problems at the same time. Hitting the Win-E key combo to get a Windows
Explorer window started taking 10 to 40 secs to complete. The taskbar would
stay locked up the entire time. The 2 computers share HP printer software,
McAfee, and Windows updates. A WinXP repair install of my desktop computer
with a WinXP Sp3 slipstream disk, followed by a manual uninstall of IE7, and
IE8, and then finally a full Windows update patch-fest seems to have fixed it
up (Update wouldn't work until I removed IE7 and IE8 as SP3 only has IE6)
But with my laptop I figured I'd upgrade my primary HDD as well. Then the
problems started.
I've a HP dv8000t, dual core T2500, 2 Gb mem, 100 Gb C: Hitachi SATA 150 HDD
The computer boots up fine. Partitions are NTFS. I recently purchased a
Western Digital 320Gb HDD and was planning to clone my partitions over to it
and make it my primary drive.
I first added the WD320 into the 2nd HDD slot and booted off C:. I started
with Norton Save and Restore (NSR) and used the option to clone my C:
partition. After serveral failed attempts where it claimed my destination
drive was "in use" it "unmounted" the drive and did the clone. I then popped
out the HDD's and add back just the WD320 in the first slot.
The WD320 seemed to be booting up but then stalled while it was building the
login screen. Thinking it was a bad clone job I thought I'd be better off
using NSR from the Boot CD and performing the clone operation again.
When I booted off the NSR CD (WinPE) it said there were no HDD's present. I
shutdown and returned my HDD's to the old config. Everything booted up
normally.
I then attempted to Boot from both my original WinXP MCE 2005 CD and my
slipstreamed SP3 version and attempted to do a repair install. Both CD's
booted and said I had no HDD's in my system.
I burned a BARTPE disk with the DriveImage plugin figuring it would do
better (Norton products tend to cost me more time trying to get them to work
than they are worth.) and it too said I have no HDD's in the system.
If I boot Ubuntu 9.10 Live CD it shows my HDD's and partitions and lets me
access them without a problem. So the problemis a WinXP one.
This is so weird. Does anyone have any idea why WinPE bootable CD's and such
can't see my HDD's? My system boots fine, so no problem with the MBR or the
Partition table -right? The HDD's use standard MS drivers and there's no RAID
or specialty drivers to consider.
Perhaps some oddity with the way WinXP identifies HDD's or NTFS partitions?
Or something weird with IRQ's or PlugNPlay?
The Primary IDE Channel has IRQ 14 all to itself.
The HDD's are both SATA drives
The SATA AHCI Controller shares an IRQ but that's never been a problem
before.
-----
IRQ 14 Primary IDE Channel OK
IRQ 19 Intel(R) 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB Universal Host Controller - 27C9 OK
IRQ 19 Texas Instruments OHCI Compliant IEEE 1394 Host Controller OK
IRQ 19 Intel(R) 82801GBM SATA AHCI Controller OK
-----
I'm at a loss. I'd really like to know I can make clones/backups and then
restore them in an emergency. Any ideas? So far the lag hasn't grown any
worst and the system is still usable. But if I can't do a clone or a repair,
the only other option seems to be a clean reinstall of WinXP. And that would
take so long I'd instead opt to rebuild all my apps on a clean install of
Win7 -assuming it will see my HDD's.
problems at the same time. Hitting the Win-E key combo to get a Windows
Explorer window started taking 10 to 40 secs to complete. The taskbar would
stay locked up the entire time. The 2 computers share HP printer software,
McAfee, and Windows updates. A WinXP repair install of my desktop computer
with a WinXP Sp3 slipstream disk, followed by a manual uninstall of IE7, and
IE8, and then finally a full Windows update patch-fest seems to have fixed it
up (Update wouldn't work until I removed IE7 and IE8 as SP3 only has IE6)
But with my laptop I figured I'd upgrade my primary HDD as well. Then the
problems started.
I've a HP dv8000t, dual core T2500, 2 Gb mem, 100 Gb C: Hitachi SATA 150 HDD
The computer boots up fine. Partitions are NTFS. I recently purchased a
Western Digital 320Gb HDD and was planning to clone my partitions over to it
and make it my primary drive.
I first added the WD320 into the 2nd HDD slot and booted off C:. I started
with Norton Save and Restore (NSR) and used the option to clone my C:
partition. After serveral failed attempts where it claimed my destination
drive was "in use" it "unmounted" the drive and did the clone. I then popped
out the HDD's and add back just the WD320 in the first slot.
The WD320 seemed to be booting up but then stalled while it was building the
login screen. Thinking it was a bad clone job I thought I'd be better off
using NSR from the Boot CD and performing the clone operation again.
When I booted off the NSR CD (WinPE) it said there were no HDD's present. I
shutdown and returned my HDD's to the old config. Everything booted up
normally.
I then attempted to Boot from both my original WinXP MCE 2005 CD and my
slipstreamed SP3 version and attempted to do a repair install. Both CD's
booted and said I had no HDD's in my system.
I burned a BARTPE disk with the DriveImage plugin figuring it would do
better (Norton products tend to cost me more time trying to get them to work
than they are worth.) and it too said I have no HDD's in the system.
If I boot Ubuntu 9.10 Live CD it shows my HDD's and partitions and lets me
access them without a problem. So the problemis a WinXP one.
This is so weird. Does anyone have any idea why WinPE bootable CD's and such
can't see my HDD's? My system boots fine, so no problem with the MBR or the
Partition table -right? The HDD's use standard MS drivers and there's no RAID
or specialty drivers to consider.
Perhaps some oddity with the way WinXP identifies HDD's or NTFS partitions?
Or something weird with IRQ's or PlugNPlay?
The Primary IDE Channel has IRQ 14 all to itself.
The HDD's are both SATA drives
The SATA AHCI Controller shares an IRQ but that's never been a problem
before.
-----
IRQ 14 Primary IDE Channel OK
IRQ 19 Intel(R) 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB Universal Host Controller - 27C9 OK
IRQ 19 Texas Instruments OHCI Compliant IEEE 1394 Host Controller OK
IRQ 19 Intel(R) 82801GBM SATA AHCI Controller OK
-----
I'm at a loss. I'd really like to know I can make clones/backups and then
restore them in an emergency. Any ideas? So far the lag hasn't grown any
worst and the system is still usable. But if I can't do a clone or a repair,
the only other option seems to be a clean reinstall of WinXP. And that would
take so long I'd instead opt to rebuild all my apps on a clean install of
Win7 -assuming it will see my HDD's.