# PC becomes really slow when installing Games or Big Apps



## 10TaTioN (Oct 13, 2010)

This problem has been bugging me for a long time, however i don't do many installs so i guess it would be ok. But im tired of it.

Every time i install a game, the computer goes unresponsive or really slow, i can barely click taskbar buttons to switch apps, and when i click it takes some time to show up. It's like the resources are all focused on the installation.

I do defrag my drive, i have 50GB space left (Drive is 250GB) and running SATA2. However when downloading Steam games there's no slowdowns or anything like that, it's just fine. So my guess is that this must be HDD related. It has always been like this for the years i have the HDD, so it is not damaged because there's no BSOD or any kind of errors.

Also, this happen with those big zip demo files that i have to extract so i can install the demo. When extracting it happens the same.

I'm not sure what to do, change Pagefile, System Settings 

Thanks in advance.

PS: System specs on the left.


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## NdMk2o1o (Oct 13, 2010)

Run an hdtach/hdtune benchmark lets see the results.

Sounds like a hdd issue, and unless your downloading at the same speed that your games are installing at (50MB/s+) then yes you won't have this issue when downloading. 

I would say that hdd would be good for only around 60MB/s so when installing a game there is no headroom for anything else as the hdd is dying to keep up. 

Thats my opinion anyway.


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## hat (Oct 13, 2010)

There's nothing to worry about. Even modern HDDs are dreadfully slow compared to even P3 era hardware. They're held back my mechanical limitations on speed. Access times are already through the roof (again, compared to other hardware), and doing read/write ops, especially something as intensive as installing a game, will slow anything else that uses the HDD to a crawl.


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## 10TaTioN (Oct 13, 2010)

NdMk2o1o said:


> Run an hdtach/hdtune benchmark lets see the results.


HDTach is not compatible with Win 7 and HDTune i need to buy so i can run Write benchmarks, so i've used Crystal Disk mark.

1GB File test.









hat said:


> There's nothing to worry about. Even modern HDDs are dreadfully slow compared to even P3 era hardware. They're held back my mechanical limitations on speed. Access times are already through the roof (again, compared to other hardware), and doing read/write ops, especially something as intensive as installing a game, will slow anything else that uses the HDD to a crawl.



I refuse to believe that we are in 2010 and stuff like this is normal.


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## NdMk2o1o (Oct 13, 2010)

10TaTioN said:


> HDTach is not compatible with Win 7 and HDTune i need to buy so i can run Write benchmarks, so i've used Crystal Disk mark.
> 
> 1GB File test.



Yes hdtach does work in 7 as an admin and in compatibility mode 

Your writes are quite shocking, I mean the reads are crap but theres something not right there, can you do a SMART check on the drive?


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## 10TaTioN (Oct 13, 2010)

NdMk2o1o said:


> Yes hdtach does work in 7 as an admin and in compatibility mode
> 
> Your writes are quite shocking, I mean the reads are crap but theres something not right there, can you do a SMART check on the drive?


I've checked the speeds for this drive and: http://crystaldiskmark.blogspot.com/2007/09/western-digital-caviar-se16-wd2500ks.html

This should be the normal:





This is a test of a 50MB file, but i did the same test, and there's only a difference of 10MB/s in the seq read.

Well i guess i know what the problem is now, but i have no idea how to fix it. Maybe a wrong BIOS setting or jumper in the drive, i'll check that now.

SMART from AIDA64, not sure if it's what you mean.


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## NdMk2o1o (Oct 13, 2010)

10TaTioN said:


> I've checked the speeds for this drive and: http://crystaldiskmark.blogspot.com/2007/09/western-digital-caviar-se16-wd2500ks.html
> 
> This should be the normal:
> http://img442.imageshack.us/img442/340/cdm1lf3.png
> ...



Well you have yours at 1000mb change it to 50mb so your using the same settings as the example.


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## hat (Oct 13, 2010)

10TaTioN said:


> I refuse to believe that we are in 2010 and stuff like this is normal.



Hard drives are still mechanical and read/write performance gets raped. A SSD will fix that for you, but they're pretty damn expensive. Maybe get a small one and use it for your system drive while you use your current drive to store games on.


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## 10TaTioN (Oct 13, 2010)

NdMk2o1o said:


> Well you have yours at 1000mb change it to 50mb so your using the same settings as the example.








And this old bench from one year ago~


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## NdMk2o1o (Oct 13, 2010)

10TaTioN said:


> http://img87.imageshack.us/img87/8/crystaldiskmark30x643.png
> 
> And this old bench from one year ago~
> 
> http://img837.imageshack.us/img837/821/win7x64p5qpro.png



Defo something wrong with your write times mate, try hd tach in compatibility mode and as an admin, see if it shows the same kind of reults. Those writes are bad, I think there lies your issue, when installing or extracting a zip file your constantly writing to the hdd and at those speeds its bogging down everything else.


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## Mussels (Oct 13, 2010)

to me, it looks like your problem is too many things running on that HDD at the same time.

the slow speeds you're experiencing are perfect examples of say, an antivirus scanning files that are being modified, or a defragger trying to 'optimise' files as they're written.


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## 10TaTioN (Oct 13, 2010)

Ok, so i tough "if it was Ok one year ago, then the problem must be something related to software, since the drive has no errors". So i've installed the drivers for the Marvell chip, and for the Intel Chipset from that date:






Now i have another problem, i'm not sure if this is still working as it should, because the jumper in the HDD is on 5-6 for the 3GB/s drives.






So i have no clue about where the jumper should be or if i remove it, is the 1.5Gb/s thing limiting the speed? I'm sorry but i have no idea on this, i do however think something is not right with the jumper because if the drive says 3GB, the jumper is limiting it to half (1.5GB), or i'm just making a mess on this? I'm confused. :/


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## Mussels (Oct 13, 2010)

it limits the speed to 150MB/s, so no its not really holding you back.

the problem is not hardware - its software.

now its either a conflict, or misconfigured (like i said, antivirus)


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## 10TaTioN (Oct 13, 2010)

Mussels said:


> it limits the speed to 150MB/s, so no its not really holding you back.
> 
> the problem is not hardware - its software.
> 
> now its either a conflict, or misconfigured (like i said, antivirus)



Well i did some research and i found that the drive achieves the best performance without any jumper, so i removed mine.

This is what i got:

ESET NOD32 + Comodo Firewall:





Comodo Firewall:





Comodo Firewall + ReadyBoost:





So i can say the problem is solved, thanks to everyone that helped, i hope this can be used as reference for future problems/Google search.

Thanks again. 

PS:

- The second screenshot is in English, and the other in Portuguese, this is because the program doesn't save the language i select and it puts the default based on the region.
- Also, you can notice that on the last benchmark, i have used 8GB more of disk space, yet it is performing much better, so i guess ReadyBoost actually does something.


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