[Sk0rch]

It has been about 5 days - I think it started when I was on Audacity.

But the point is that it's going extremely slow. When I do ctrl+alt+ delete .. it eats up so memory its ridiculous.. firefox on average is 100k+ memory usage, at least.. hl.exe was 260k+... its ridiculous. I'm not sure what did it.. I did install firefox 3 recently - but its not just my browser, its my laptop- and I have no idea what's causing it - but it is extremely frustrating.

I know it is my laptop because when i turn the laptop on and it shows the windows xp loading screen.. before that took like 5-10 seconds to load.. and now it takes at least 2 minutes for that screen to go away.. and my laptop boots 8x slower.. it takes like 10 minutes at least... also if im playing videos it skips tremendously and the sound comes out extremely weird.. like its in slow motion and all robotic sort of.. i have no idea how to describe it but the point is that something is terribly wrong and I have no idea how to fix - please help.

I have an acer aspire 5672 laptop thats about 2 years old.. i have had a lot of issues with its fan - it overheats constantly - i tried replacing the thermal paste and everything- but that is fixed for now with this external fan pointing at it..although it makes these weird cracking noises for minutes on end occasionally.. i think it is the fan.. but thats not the point of the thread, just thought you should know.

Does anyone have any idea what's wrong? I ran antivirus scans and defragmentattion ( well i tried to do defragmentation, doesn't really let me ). I'm sure reformatting the laptop and deleting would probably fix it but I don't want to delete my music/videos..

Thanks for reading.

Edited by Sk0rch, 05 September 2008 - 05:24 PM.

[Advertisements]

Helo SkOrch...

Right click on My Computer and choose "Properties". Click the "Hardware" tab and then the "Device Manager" button. Expand (click +) IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers.

Right click on the Primary IDE channel, choose "Properties", then click the "Advanced Settings" tab. List the Current Transfer Mode for each device shown for this channel.

Right click on the Secondary IDE channel, choose "Properties", then click the "Advanced Settings" tab. List the Current Transfer Mode for each device shown for this channel.

wannabe1

[wannabe1]

Helo SkOrch...

Right click on My Computer and choose "Properties". Click the "Hardware" tab and then the "Device Manager" button. Expand (click +) IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers.

Right click on the Primary IDE channel, choose "Properties", then click the "Advanced Settings" tab. List the Current Transfer Mode for each device shown for this channel.

Right click on the Secondary IDE channel, choose "Properties", then click the "Advanced Settings" tab. List the Current Transfer Mode for each device shown for this channel.

wannabe1

[Sk0rch]

Thanks for responding.

I already did this - I think I googled this or something.. all the devices say "DMA if available" - So I think that is fine.

Right now firefox is only taking 55k memory, as compared to 106 10 minutes ago.. occasionally it will run fine but it is still very slow compared to before. I have 74 processes running, and I'm sure I dont need a lot of them. But I don't understand what the problem is because in task manager right now the commit charge is only 557/2485M and only 5 % cpu usage!

[wannabe1]

DMA if available is what it should be. Current Transfer Mode is what it's actually using and is the information I need.

[Sk0rch]

oh - youre right.

PRIMARY IDE: current transfer mode

device 0: PIO MODE

device 1: not applicable

SEcONDARY IDE: current transfer mode

device 0: Ultra DMA Mode 2

device 1: not applicable

[wannabe1]

Right click on Primary IDE channel and choose "Uninstall"...accept the change.

Reboot and let Windows reinstall the channel and any devices attached to it....then reboot again.

Run better after the second reboot?

[Sk0rch]

Thanks a lot!

everything seems much faster now and everything is eating up less memory.

I saw the properties of the primary IDE channel and it has changed to ultra dma mode 5!

can i ask what all this means? i know dma means direct memory access - right? how did it change from ultra dma mode 5 to pio mode?? i didn't go in there and manually change it. Regardless, I'm glad it's all fixed - thanks once again!

[wannabe1]

DMA mode (Direct Memory Access) utilizes the RAM to run tasks in Windows. PIO mode (Programmed Input/Output only) runs tasks using the processor...which is much slower at data transfer. Uninstalling and reinstalling the channel resets the channel to the installation default, which for the HDD is UDMA 5 (DMA 5)...the optical drives will usually be assigned a lower number (DMA 2 or DMA 3).

When an IDE channel sets itself to PIO only, it's usually due to data transfer errors from a device on that channel. In your case, it's probably the HDD. It may be a good time to get in the habit of keeping your data backed up...at least anything you want to keep.

This does not mean the HDD is failing, but that's one thing that can cause a channel to drop into PIO mode. It may be just fine and run for a good long time. If it drops into PIO again, though, I would suspect a weak HDD is the culprit.

Glad that sorted the immediate problem........

[Sk0rch]

It has happened again =[.

primary idea

current transfer mod

device 0 - PIO MODE

device 1 - not applicable

secondary ide

current transfer mode

device 0 - ultra dma mode 2

device 1 - not applicable

i am doing the thing that you last time which fixed it - but why did it happen again? should i do something different? thanks.

[wannabe1]

When an IDE channel sets itself to PIO only, it's usually due to data transfer errors from a device on that channel. In your case, it's probably the HDD. It may be a good time to get in the habit of keeping your data backed up...at least anything you want to keep.

This would be a strong indicator that the HDD is failing. Are your backups current?

[Sk0rch]

backups? what backups? I haven't made any backups.

[Sk0rch]

??? hello?

whenever i restart my laptop.. i cannot enter my password because the power of the keyboard keeps going out i can only move my mouse sometimes but i cannot type anything - my laptop thinks that i have 0 battery - the keyboard is fine before the operating system loads.. it takes me a long time just to type in my password because i have to keep replugging the charger until it gives me power to the keyboard.. its not just the keyboard its also the square mouse on my laptop.. but i dont use that mouse i have an external usb mouse that i use, which works most of the time during this problem.

[Sk0rch]

the speed thing is not an issue anymore - its more of the power thing on my keyboard and interface mouse - should i make a new thread?

[happyrock]

it takes me a long time just to type in my password because i have to keep replugging the charger until it gives me power to the keyboard.

what happens when you leave it plugged into the wall...