need advice on slow file system

On 03/30/2012 05:04 PM, Paul wrote:
Todd wrote:
On 03/30/2012 04:00 PM, Char Jackson wrote:
On Fri, 30 Mar 2012 13:03:02 -0700, wrote:

On 03/30/2012 11:51 AM, Yousuf Khan wrote:
On 29/03/2012 11:57 PM, Todd wrote:
Hi All,

I cloned a customer's dilapidated XP Pro sp3 computer over
to a new fancy computer. She had "a lot" of intellectual property
on her old computer and was tickled that everything came
back *EXACTLY* the way it was.

And it did come back "exactly" the way it was. Both her
old and her new computer have very, very slow access
to their hard drives. What should take 10 seconds takes
about two minutes on both computers. All my test outside
of XP show nothing wrong with her hardware. So, what ever
was slowing her down on her old computer if still having
fun on her new computer: an exact clone.

Oh, and I totally forgot about running Bootvis to try to speed up disk
loading on XP:

Step-By-Step: Use BootVis to improve XP boot performance | TechRepublic
http://www.techrepublic.com/article/...rmance/5034622



Yousuf Khan

Hi Yousuf,

Thank you for the help.

Disk access drags even after boot time. For instance,
if you try to install a piece of software that would ordinarily
take a minute, you risk being seen falling asleep by the customer
waiting for the thing. Now once the new software is up and running,
it goes like the wind, although you have a pretty good wait for it
to load.

-T

It sounds like the IDE ports are configured to use PIO mode instead of
DMA. Even if originally configured to use DMA, Windows will step down
to PIO if it thinks it needs to, so it's worth checking.

Device Manager, IDE/ATA/ATAPI Controllers


Hi Char,

The hard drive is controlled by a Siig SC-SA0L11-S1 PCIe card.
But a good tip none the less.

-T

A simple HDTune read benchmark, will confirm this for you.

A flat line at 4-7MB/sec is PIO, while a curve with more decent rates
(up to around 135MB/sec for a cheap HDD) is DMA transfer based.

http://www.hdtune.com/files/hdtune_255.exe

A sustained benchmark test such as that one, is sector based, so
fragmentation plays no part in the benchmark. The test works
in the same way a run of "dd" would work - purely sequential at
the sector level.

Paul

Hi Paul,

Remember that the problem is identical on both machines. My hardware
tests on the new machine shows no hardware problems. Live Xfce CD
screams so fast it is dizzying. I had a bare XP installed to test
the hardware before the clone, and oh boy! If there had been a
hardware issue, the bare XP install would have taken two weeks,
instead of ~30 minutes (got to love SATA3). The problem is in
the installed operating system after the clone.

Thank you for the help,
-T

Todd wrote:

Remember that the problem is identical on both machines. My hardware
tests on the new machine shows no hardware problems.
This would suggests that your old Windows system was corrupted and you
cloned it to put it on your new system. The corruption is still there
and it won't go away unless you start from scratch using the original
CDs for Operating system and for the applications you are using or you
want to use.

Cloning is a technique to make an identical copy of the system and so
the corruption has been transferred to the new system.

My personla opinion is to wipe the new system blank and start again.

Hope this helps.

--
Good Guy
Website: http://mytaxsite.co.uk
Website: http://html-css.co.uk
Forums: http://mytaxsite.boardhost.com
Email: http://mytaxsite.co.uk/contact-us

On Fri, 30 Mar 2012 17:44:45 -0700, Todd wrote:

On 03/30/2012 05:04 PM, Paul wrote:
Todd wrote:
On 03/30/2012 04:00 PM, Char Jackson wrote:
On Fri, 30 Mar 2012 13:03:02 -0700, wrote:

On 03/30/2012 11:51 AM, Yousuf Khan wrote:
On 29/03/2012 11:57 PM, Todd wrote:
Hi All,

I cloned a customer's dilapidated XP Pro sp3 computer over
to a new fancy computer. She had "a lot" of intellectual property
on her old computer and was tickled that everything came
back *EXACTLY* the way it was.

And it did come back "exactly" the way it was. Both her
old and her new computer have very, very slow access
to their hard drives. What should take 10 seconds takes
about two minutes on both computers. All my test outside
of XP show nothing wrong with her hardware. So, what ever
was slowing her down on her old computer if still having
fun on her new computer: an exact clone.

Oh, and I totally forgot about running Bootvis to try to speed up disk
loading on XP:

Step-By-Step: Use BootVis to improve XP boot performance | TechRepublic
http://www.techrepublic.com/article/...rmance/5034622



Yousuf Khan

Hi Yousuf,

Thank you for the help.

Disk access drags even after boot time. For instance,
if you try to install a piece of software that would ordinarily
take a minute, you risk being seen falling asleep by the customer
waiting for the thing. Now once the new software is up and running,
it goes like the wind, although you have a pretty good wait for it
to load.

-T

It sounds like the IDE ports are configured to use PIO mode instead of
DMA. Even if originally configured to use DMA, Windows will step down
to PIO if it thinks it needs to, so it's worth checking.

Device Manager, IDE/ATA/ATAPI Controllers


Hi Char,

The hard drive is controlled by a Siig SC-SA0L11-S1 PCIe card.
But a good tip none the less.

-T

A simple HDTune read benchmark, will confirm this for you.

A flat line at 4-7MB/sec is PIO, while a curve with more decent rates
(up to around 135MB/sec for a cheap HDD) is DMA transfer based.

http://www.hdtune.com/files/hdtune_255.exe

A sustained benchmark test such as that one, is sector based, so
fragmentation plays no part in the benchmark. The test works
in the same way a run of "dd" would work - purely sequential at
the sector level.

Paul

Hi Paul,

Remember that the problem is identical on both machines. My hardware
tests on the new machine shows no hardware problems. Live Xfce CD
screams so fast it is dizzying. I had a bare XP installed to test
the hardware before the clone, and oh boy! If there had been a
hardware issue, the bare XP install would have taken two weeks,
instead of ~30 minutes (got to love SATA3). The problem is in
the installed operating system after the clone.

Thank you for the help,
-T

The thing that I and Paul are talking about isn't a hardware problem,
necessarily, it's primarily a configuration issue and is easy to test,
as Paul mentioned above.

Your descriptions so far lead me to believe that the issue is solely
disk access time and nothing to do with IE, Win Explorer, firewalls,
or antimalware processes.

On 03/30/2012 05:58 PM, Good Guy wrote:


Todd wrote:

Remember that the problem is identical on both machines. My hardware
tests on the new machine shows no hardware problems.
This would suggests that your old Windows system was corrupted and you
cloned it to put it on your new system.

No suggestion about it. That is exactly what happened

The corruption is still there
and it won't go away unless you start from scratch using the original
CDs for Operating system and for the applications you are using or you
want to use.

Cloning is a technique to make an identical copy of the system and so
the corruption has been transferred to the new system.

Exactly


My personla opinion is to wipe the new system blank and start again.


I would be about two days installing everything back on it
and even at that, she still would have stuff wrong (meaning
different) and various items would never be the same.
And she would be down for about two weeks awaiting various
vendors to come in and reinstall all kinds of niche software.
It would be ugly.

She has a lot of intellectual property on the thing that
she must preserve.

Hope this helps.


Thank you for your time and suggestions. I appreciate
you sharing with me.

-T

On 03/30/2012 07:25 PM, Todd wrote:
My personla opinion is to wipe the new system blank and start again.


I would be about two days installing everything back on it
and even at that, she still would have stuff wrong (meaning
different) and various items would never be the same.
And she would be down for about two weeks awaiting various
vendors to come in and reinstall all kinds of niche software.
It would be ugly.

She has a lot of intellectual property on the thing that
she must preserve.

One thing about this project that is cool. She will
have no down time, as I still have access to her old
computer. Troubleshoot on the old computer and bring
the fix up to her on her new computer. I don't have
to kick her off her new computer for endless hours or
myself have to work after hours into the night. (I
get to go home too!) And, that is a first for me.

This is turning out to be a challenging and fun
project (I know, I need a life). I will get
back if and when I fix this.

I have talk the customer into further troubleshooting
because, believe it or not, even with the slow file
system, the new system is still light years above
her old system. And, she actually likes it. Just,
every time I sit down at it, I know it ain't running
right. And, I build it. It is a pride thing.

Thanks you all for the help!

-T

Todd, your friend sounds like an OCD cyberhoarder. I can't blame the
hoe, I'm one too. I have the same desktop I've had since Windows95 and
I've always just replaced the HDD every time I got a new computer and
ran a repair install to fix the hardware incompabilities.

I also have the same weird performance problems on my current machine
(which I got about a million files on.) After the uptime gets high
enough, everything suddenly hangs and it gets worse for no obvious
reason. No high CPU usage, no disk or I/O usage, no hardware
interrupts. Can't pinpoint the ****er. Let me know when you figure it
out so I can get my malfunctioning **** in gear too.

On 3/30/2012 7:26 PM, Todd wrote:
Many thanks,
-T

The first thing I would do is, as Paul suggested, run HDtune (or
HDtach). If the HD params (e.g., DMA settings) were corrupted on the
old PC, they could have been corruptly cloned onto the new PC, and
HDtune/HDtach will show horrible performance. For best results,
HDtune/HDtach should be run as close to stand-alone as you can get, so
stop all running apps.

Next, run CPU-Z to see if the caches are disabled, or if the CPU clock
rate has been down-shifted, or if the memory params are out to lunch.
These problems don't sound like your case, but they are easy to check.

MSconfig will show if stuff you don't need is being invoked at boot
time. And, the Task Manager will show if stuff you don't need is
running. If you are lucky, killing off one process after another may
restore disk access time -- and you'll know which process is the culprit.

Then, you may want to run down the list of services that are running and
stop any that you don't think are needed; be particularly suspicious of
non-MS services.
--
Cheers, Bob

On 30/03/2012 4:03 PM, Todd wrote:
Hi Yousuf,

Thank you for the help.

Disk access drags even after boot time. For instance,
if you try to install a piece of software that would ordinarily
take a minute, you risk being seen falling asleep by the customer
waiting for the thing. Now once the new software is up and running,
it goes like the wind, although you have a pretty good wait for it
to load.

It sounds like you could use what's available in Windows 7 now, which is
called the "In-place Upgrade Install", which basically reinstalls the
OS, without erasing or uninstalling any of the already installed
programs or data. I'm not sure if a similar feature is available on XP.

Yousuf Khan

"Todd" wrote in message ...
Hi All,
I cloned a customer's dilapidated XP Pro sp3 computer over
to a new fancy computer. She had "a lot" of intellectual property
on her old computer and was tickled that everything came
back *EXACTLY* the way it was.
And it did come back "exactly" the way it was. Both her
old and her new computer have very, very slow access
to their hard drives. What should take 10 seconds takes
about two minutes on both computers.
snip

Please repost with more information, including examples of the kind of
file access you are attempting when the problem occurs.

Ben

In ,
Yousuf Khan wrote:
On 30/03/2012 4:03 PM, Todd wrote:
Hi Yousuf,

Thank you for the help.

Disk access drags even after boot time. For instance,
if you try to install a piece of software that would ordinarily
take a minute, you risk being seen falling asleep by the customer
waiting for the thing. Now once the new software is up and running,
it goes like the wind, although you have a pretty good wait for it
to load.

It sounds like you could use what's available in Windows 7 now, which
is called the "In-place Upgrade Install", which basically reinstalls
the OS, without erasing or uninstalling any of the already installed
programs or data. I'm not sure if a similar feature is available on
XP.

Yes, under XP it is called a repair install. Although some things like
IE and SP versions must match what is on the drive and the install XP
disc. Otherwise you can have some serious problems. And if something
goes wrong, there is no undo. So make a backup first.

--
Bill
Gateway M465e ('06 era) - OE-QuoteFix v1.19.2
Centrino Core Duo T2400 1.83GHz - 2GB - Windows XP SP3

On 03/31/2012 09:56 AM, Ben Myers wrote:
wrote in message ...
Hi All,
I cloned a customer's dilapidated XP Pro sp3 computer over
to a new fancy computer. She had "a lot" of intellectual property
on her old computer and was tickled that everything came
back *EXACTLY* the way it was.
And it did come back "exactly" the way it was. Both her
old and her new computer have very, very slow access
to their hard drives. What should take 10 seconds takes
about two minutes on both computers.
snip

Please repost with more information, including examples of the kind of
file access you are attempting when the problem occurs.

Ben

Hi Ben,

I notice the problem mainly when I am uninstalling or reinstalling
software. I notice it when starting software too.

-T

On 03/31/2012 04:46 AM, Bob Willard wrote:
On 3/30/2012 7:26 PM, Todd wrote:
Many thanks,
-T

The first thing I would do is, as Paul suggested, run HDtune (or
HDtach). If the HD params (e.g., DMA settings) were corrupted on the old
PC, they could have been corruptly cloned onto the new PC, and
HDtune/HDtach will show horrible performance. For best results,
HDtune/HDtach should be run as close to stand-alone as you can get, so
stop all running apps.

Next, run CPU-Z to see if the caches are disabled, or if the CPU clock
rate has been down-shifted, or if the memory params are out to lunch.
These problems don't sound like your case, but they are easy to check.

MSconfig will show if stuff you don't need is being invoked at boot
time. And, the Task Manager will show if stuff you don't need is
running. If you are lucky, killing off one process after another may
restore disk access time -- and you'll know which process is the culprit.

Then, you may want to run down the list of services that are running and
stop any that you don't think are needed; be particularly suspicious of
non-MS services.

Hi Bob,

Thank you! Very well thought out.

-T

On 03/31/2012 12:51 PM, Todd wrote:
On 03/31/2012 09:56 AM, Ben Myers wrote:
wrote in message
...
Hi All,
I cloned a customer's dilapidated XP Pro sp3 computer over
to a new fancy computer. She had "a lot" of intellectual property
on her old computer and was tickled that everything came
back *EXACTLY* the way it was.
And it did come back "exactly" the way it was. Both her
old and her new computer have very, very slow access
to their hard drives. What should take 10 seconds takes
about two minutes on both computers.
snip

Please repost with more information, including examples of the kind of
file access you are attempting when the problem occurs.

Ben

Hi Ben,

I notice the problem mainly when I am uninstalling or reinstalling
software. I notice it when starting software too.

And copying files back and forth from the hard drive to the network


-T

"Todd" wrote in message ...
On 03/31/2012 09:56 AM, Ben Myers wrote:
wrote in message ...
Hi All,
I cloned a customer's dilapidated XP Pro sp3 computer over
to a new fancy computer. She had "a lot" of intellectual property
on her old computer and was tickled that everything came
back *EXACTLY* the way it was.
And it did come back "exactly" the way it was. Both her
old and her new computer have very, very slow access
to their hard drives. What should take 10 seconds takes
about two minutes on both computers.
snip

Please repost with more information, including examples of the kind of
file access you are attempting when the problem occurs.

Ben

Hi Ben,

I notice the problem mainly when I am uninstalling or reinstalling
software. I notice it when starting software too.

Possibly like an antivirus program. See if Microsoft's Malicious Software Removal
tool is installed and running. Also, you might try using msconfig to disable all
non-Microsoft services and any unnecessary applications in startup and see if that
makes a difference.

Ben

On 04/01/2012 09:34 AM, Ben Myers wrote:
wrote in message ...
On 03/31/2012 09:56 AM, Ben Myers wrote:
wrote in message ...
Hi All,
I cloned a customer's dilapidated XP Pro sp3 computer over
to a new fancy computer. She had "a lot" of intellectual property
on her old computer and was tickled that everything came
back *EXACTLY* the way it was.
And it did come back "exactly" the way it was. Both her
old and her new computer have very, very slow access
to their hard drives. What should take 10 seconds takes
about two minutes on both computers.
snip

Please repost with more information, including examples of the kind of
file access you are attempting when the problem occurs.

Ben

Hi Ben,

I notice the problem mainly when I am uninstalling or reinstalling
software. I notice it when starting software too.

Possibly like an antivirus program. See if Microsoft's Malicious Software Removal
tool is installed and running. Also, you might try using msconfig to disable all
non-Microsoft services and any unnecessary applications in startup and see if that
makes a difference.

Ben

Thank you!