Computer goes into slow mode. occasionally?

  • Thread starter Thread starter grazuncle
  • Start date Start date
G

grazuncle

Hi

I put a system together for my pal.... it has been going well except for
occasional slowness i.e. click on a menu and wait... a couple of seconds and
up it pops.. no obvious reason. He then decided to try video editing on it..
worked a treat for a few weeks and then dropped frames capturing or
outputting and slow at times, again.

I know it's not the ideal platform:

1Ghz Duron 512Mb MSI KM2M Combo L board and 120Gb IBM 7200rpm Hd Win 98SE

but when it is working ok, it is well up to the few small jobs required.
So.... thinking it might be the 98 installation, we bought a large HD and
installed Wk2 in it's own partition (NTFS) and left some free for capturing
(NTFS formatted)

Ok for a time and now it goes into slow mode at 'seemingly' random times and
Turbo mode (normal) the rest of the time. User has noticed the clock is
affected too. I'm stumped on this one..

It is not running hot @ 29c, memory is not old or slow. PSU is 400w and came
out of my AMD XP2400 with three HDs so has been tested to a greater degree
than the Duron system.

suggestions?
 
grazuncle said:
Hi

I put a system together for my pal.... it has been going well except
for occasional slowness i.e. click on a menu and wait... a couple of
seconds and up it pops.. no obvious reason. He then decided to try
video editing on it.. worked a treat for a few weeks and then dropped
frames capturing or outputting and slow at times, again.

I know it's not the ideal platform:

1Ghz Duron 512Mb MSI KM2M Combo L board and 120Gb IBM 7200rpm Hd Win
98SE

but when it is working ok, it is well up to the few small jobs
required. So.... thinking it might be the 98 installation, we bought
a large HD and installed Wk2 in it's own partition (NTFS) and left
some free for capturing (NTFS formatted)

Ok for a time and now it goes into slow mode at 'seemingly' random
times and Turbo mode (normal) the rest of the time. User has noticed
the clock is affected too. I'm stumped on this one..

It is not running hot @ 29c, memory is not old or slow. PSU is 400w
and came out of my AMD XP2400 with three HDs so has been tested to a
greater degree than the Duron system.

suggestions?
Click to expand...

Is DMA enabled? Does it have the latest video drivers?
 
Thanks for reply.....

DMA is enabled and video drivers ..don't know what latest version is... will
check.

Would video drivers cause occasional slowing down?

I'm open to any suggestions at present..

I have run dry!
 
Hi

I put a system together for my pal.... it has been going well except for
occasional slowness i.e. click on a menu and wait... a couple of seconds and
up it pops.. no obvious reason. He then decided to try video editing on it..
worked a treat for a few weeks and then dropped frames capturing or
outputting and slow at times, again.

I know it's not the ideal platform:

1Ghz Duron 512Mb MSI KM2M Combo L board and 120Gb IBM 7200rpm Hd Win 98SE

but when it is working ok, it is well up to the few small jobs required.
So.... thinking it might be the 98 installation, we bought a large HD and
installed Wk2 in it's own partition (NTFS) and left some free for capturing
(NTFS formatted)
Click to expand...

Win98SE needs the system.ini vcache tweak for 512MB, but
otherwise it should capture video or display the menu as
well as win2k. that's not to suggest WIn98SE is "as good"
in an overall OS hierarchy, but for the purposes described
it's fine.
Ok for a time and now it goes into slow mode at 'seemingly' random times and
Turbo mode (normal) the rest of the time. User has noticed the clock is
affected too. I'm stumped on this one..
Click to expand...

Could be buggy bios. COuld be Norton/Symantec software
products. Could be the battery is dead/dying. Scan for
spyware/viri/etc.

AS "Burning_Ranger" mentioned, check that DMA is enabled for
drives and get newest video driver.

Bad IDE cables can also cause a delay in drive access.
 
grazuncle said:
Hi

I put a system together for my pal.... it has been going well except for
occasional slowness i.e. click on a menu and wait... a couple of seconds and
up it pops.. no obvious reason. He then decided to try video editing on it..
worked a treat for a few weeks and then dropped frames capturing or
outputting and slow at times, again.
Click to expand...

Indexing service and other resource hoggers turned off?

Jon
 
grazuncle said:
Thanks for reply.....

DMA is enabled and video drivers ..don't know what latest version
is... will check.

Would video drivers cause occasional slowing down?

I'm open to any suggestions at present..

I have run dry!
Click to expand...

Bad video drivers can cause all sorts of non-video related problems.
 
grazuncle said:
I put a system together for my pal.... it has been going well
except for occasional slowness i.e. click on a menu and wait... a
couple of seconds and up it pops.. no obvious reason. He then
decided to try video editing on it.. worked a treat for a few
weeks and then dropped frames capturing or outputting and slow at
times, again.

I know it's not the ideal platform:

1Ghz Duron 512Mb MSI KM2M Combo L board and
120Gb IBM 7200rpm Hd Win 98SE

but when it is working ok, it is well up to the few small jobs
required. So.... thinking it might be the 98 installation, we
bought a large HD and installed Wk2 in it's own partition (NTFS)
and left some free for capturing (NTFS formatted)
Click to expand...

It is probably doing just what you told the power control to do -
powering down the HD after a quiescent period, and taking a couple
of seconds to power it up. Check your power delay settings.

--
Some informative links:
http://www.geocities.com/nnqweb/

http://www.caliburn.nl/topposting.html
http://www.netmeister.org/news/learn2quote.html
 
Thanks for suggestion...

However in power section.. HD power down is set to never.

but thanks
 
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