# New Build Seems So Very Sloooooooooooow!



## Mighty Boosh (Jul 6, 2011)

Hi all,

I recently built a new system which had its teething troubles.

*See Here - http://www.techpowerup.com/forums/showthread.php?t=147992*

Anyway, irs all up and running now but when I think about it, compared to my previous system this should go like a stabbed rat but it seems to be even slower than my old system.

To summarize, my old system was powered by an old AMD Athlon CPU with 2GB of RAM. My new system is powered by an AMD Phenom 2 4 core 3.1 Ghz CPU with 8GB of RAM. Surely I should see an improvement in speed, performance and handling of multiple apps?

My question is, where to look first? have not got a clue as to what to look for, maybe you guys might know some tell tale signs of what to look for and what could be the cause.

Anyhoo, all suggestions welcome, clean ones that is 

Cheers, Chris


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## phanbuey (Jul 6, 2011)

i had a problem like this on a build... it was super slow for no reason.

A motherboard swap fixed the issues.  Ended up being a cheap that mobo wasn't playing nice with something.


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## BarbaricSoul (Jul 6, 2011)

first thing I'm gonna ask is for you to look towards the top of this page and click the User CP link, look on the left side of the screen, and fill-in your system specs so we know exactly what you have.


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## erixx (Jul 6, 2011)

Don't know your OS, but did you update/verify ALL your systems drivers? Looked into Device Manager (Windows)? Mobo drivers CD? Etc.

Mobo's BIOS settings are on AUTO or maybe on the lowest possible? Did you activate the "more than 4 Gig of RAM" option?

Many things to check.


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## Melvis (Jul 6, 2011)

We need more info, OS, and full system specs please?

And ,ore details on where it seems to be "slow"

Then we can give you some more ideas to test out etc.

1 i can think of is your HDD running in IDE or Sata mode?


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## Mighty Boosh (Jul 7, 2011)

phanbuey said:


> i had a problem like this on a build... it was super slow for no reason.
> 
> A motherboard swap fixed the issues.  Ended up being a cheap that mobo wasn't playing nice with something.



Thanks for that, have emailed th supplier to see what they have to say.



BarbaricSoul said:


> first thing I'm gonna ask is for you to look towards the top of this page and click the User CP link, look on the left side of the screen, and fill-in your system specs so we know exactly what you have.



Apologies, should have done that the other week when joining. Anyway, now done.



erixx said:


> Don't know your OS, but did you update/verify ALL your systems drivers? Looked into Device Manager (Windows)? Mobo drivers CD? Etc.
> 
> Mobo's BIOS settings are on AUTO or maybe on the lowest possible? Did you activate the "more than 4 Gig of RAM" option?
> 
> Many things to check.



Hi there, OS is XP Home, all new mobo drivers installed and up to date to the best of my knowledge. According to the suppliers, as it was a bundle the mobo and BIOS come pre set up and tested prior to dispatch. Not sure where to check the RAM's capacity options in BIOS. Spent most of the other week browsing thru BIOS and never saw any options like that.



Melvis said:


> We need more info, OS, and full system specs please?
> 
> And ,ore details on where it seems to be "slow"
> 
> ...



OS and specs now supplied 

Examples of slowness.........

Tranfering files from old system. Had some movie files on my old hard drive I wanted to keep. Anyway, 4.4GB DVD files that used to take on my old system around 5/6 minutes to move are now taking anything upto 28 minutes to move via an external USB caddy.

Opening multiple apps. Lets say I am using Firefox to browse the web, if I open another program this would be really slow to open. As a test case I now have Firefox running and i'll open up Microsoft Word and time it. BRB

OK, took around 25 seconds to load. Much slower than my old system I'm pretty sure.


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## Beertintedgoggles (Jul 7, 2011)

Do you have any antivirus programs running?  If so, try disabling it and see if the responsiveness of your pc improves.  Some of those can be so invasive and inefficient that they can bring even a pretty powerful system to its knees.


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## Hayder_Master (Jul 7, 2011)

What about you HDD it's new one or you still hold old one?


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## Mighty Boosh (Jul 7, 2011)

Beertintedgoggles said:


> Do you have any antivirus programs running?  If so, try disabling it and see if the responsiveness of your pc improves.  Some of those can be so invasive and inefficient that they can bring even a pretty powerful system to its knees.




Hi there,

First off, I want some of those goggles

Anyway, I'm currently running AVG free right now. Have done so for many years now and its always done OK for me and not caused any problems s'far. I'll try disabling it and see what the out come is.

One thing I forgot to mention was the fact that this system is also very slow to boot, much much slower than my old system. I have turned on quick boot in BIOS but this has made little if any difference.

Cheers, Chris


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## Mighty Boosh (Jul 7, 2011)

Hayder_Master said:


> What about you HDD it's new one or you still hold old one?



Oops, forgot this as well. HDD is a new never before used HDD. Its deicated with a 40GB partition for the OS and the other partition is for small program files. Any large programs I run from an external disk via a hot swap bay. The main HDD though is connected via IDE as I have used the four SATA inputs for 2 optical drives and the hot swap drive bay and a 5.25" multi media bay.


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## Jetster (Jul 7, 2011)

I read this whole thing and didn't see anywhere were you were running a 64 bit OS? Don't want to make an assumption just cause you have 8Gb ram. 

But anyway I would get Windows 7 64. Its going to make a big difference. But truly you need some benches to see where you  are. Not just "it feels the same" But hard data then we will see. But seriously get 7 64 bit


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## animal007uk (Jul 7, 2011)

Try disconecting the IDE drive as i have seen some AMD systems have problems when using IDE and Sata at the same time although things might be diffrent with newer stuff but its still worth checking. Or is the IDE drive the one with the OS on?


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## Mighty Boosh (Jul 7, 2011)

animal007uk said:


> Try disconecting the IDE drive as i have seen some AMD systems have problems when using IDE and Sata at the same time although things might be diffrent with newer stuff but its still worth checking. Or is the IDE drive the one with the OS on?




Hello mate,

The IDE is the one with the OS on so thats not an option right now.

On the subject of some firm figures, courtesy of Novabench..........

*07/07/2011 13:06:56
Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition
AMD Athlon II X4 645 @ 3114 MHz
Graphics Card: NVIDIA GeForce 7025 / NVIDIA nForce 630a

3040 MB System RAM (Score: 90)
- RAM Speed: 2690 MB/s

CPU Tests (Score: 300)
- Floating Point Operations/Second: 74430384
- Integer Operations/Second: 257092620
- MD5 Hashes Generated/Second: 678130

Graphics Tests (Score: 7)
- 3D Frames Per Second: 29

Hardware Tests (Score: 3)
- Primary Partition Capacity: 39 GB
- Drive Write Speed: 6 MB/s*

For an 8GB system, should that RAM result not be a lot better?


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## phanbuey (Jul 7, 2011)

what it sounds like is the drive controller / USB controller on the mobo is having issues in windows... the motherboard vendor will always deny anything and everything. 

Have you tried updating the BIOS?


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## Splodge (Jul 7, 2011)

Looking at your results, you are only running a 32bit version of XP, so your system will only address a max of about 3.5GB of you ram, as was mentioned earlier you would be allot better off getting a 64bit version on Win7 (XP 64bit was very experimental and had limited driver support!) I do realise that this might be a budget issue as well though!

You HDD is most likely the issue, you are running your primary system drive on your slowest port, IDE specification is allot slower than even SATA1, and hence your drive write speed is reporting 6MB/s only, even IDE should be running allot better than that. if it is only running at 6MB a second it is going to take a while to shift a 4.4GB file....

Does your old system you are comparing it with have it's main drive on a Sata connection? Have you checked what sort of IDE cable you are using for your main drive as well, as there were a number of different types and is sounds like you might not have a 40wire cable.

Good practice for performance would mean you would be allot better off with one of your DVD drives being on the IDE and you main (and hence most used) drive on the first SATA channel, with a SATA2 drive on it (or even 3 sorry not checked if you mobo is compatible with 3)

I hope some of this might help, I am not normally much for writing on forums (hence I needed to sign up to reply!)

Cheers Splodge


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## newtekie1 (Jul 7, 2011)

I was just going to say it was the hard drive causing the problem.  If the one in your specs is correct, it is likely an old 160GB drive that just has terrible read/write speeds.  And the benchmark numbers that were posted confirm that.

I'm not going to say the IDE port is the issue, as really even the highest end SATA3 HDDs barely use all the bandwidth provided by IDE, however old IDE drives are slow, it wouldn't matter what interface they are on, the physical drives are slow.

Also, your OS is crippling your system.  It is only allowing 3GB of your RAM to be used, wasting the other 5GB.  You need to upgrade to an 64-bit system.


So you need to put a new SATA hard drive in that machine, simply for the fact that SATA drives are so much faster than IDE, and the nVidia chipset on the board you are using likely has extremely poor IDE support.  It is there, and works, but just barely.  I would avoid using the IDE port at all costs.  Even if you have to buy an add on SATA controller for one of your optical drives to use.


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## CJCerny (Jul 7, 2011)

I guess another mystery would be why the OP stated that his new system was built around a Phenom 2 and Novabench shows it as an Athlon 2. Those aren't the same CPU at all. OP must have misspoken or they sold him something other than he thought he was buying.


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## freaksavior (Jul 7, 2011)

newtekie1 said:


> I was just going to say it was the hard drive causing the problem.  If the one in your specs is correct, it is likely an old 160GB drive that just has terrible read/write speeds.  And the benchmark numbers that were posted confirm that.
> 
> I'm not going to say the IDE port is the issue, as really even the highest end SATA3 HDDs barely use all the bandwidth provided by IDE, however old IDE drives are slow, it wouldn't matter what interface they are on, the physical drives are slow.
> 
> ...



I have to agree with newtekie1 on this one. New system with outdated os and hard drive is just asking for trouble. Upgrade the hard drive to something more mordern and jump on the windows 7 bandwagon. You'll see a good bit of speed difference.


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## TC-man (Jul 7, 2011)

Mighty Boosh said:


> Hello mate,
> 
> The IDE is the one with the OS on so thats not an option right now.
> 
> ...



Hi,

There's your problem, do not use more than 4 GB ram on a Windows XP 32bit OS since it will give you problems such as e.g. poor performance and programs begin to say you do not have enough memory and so on. Try to run the system with 2GB and see if the performance is better than before with 8 GB.

And seriously, upgrade to Windows 7 x64 (Home Premium, Professional or Ultimate edition) and you will see the performance increase, expecially with 8 GB system memory.


Good luck!


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## newtekie1 (Jul 7, 2011)

CJCerny said:


> I guess another mystery would be why the OP stated that his new system was built around a Phenom 2 and Novabench shows it as an Athlon 2. Those aren't the same CPU at all. OP must have misspoken or they sold him something other than he thought he was buying.



A lot of people just don't recognize the difference between a Phenom 2 and Athlon 2, they assume they are interchangable.  An AMD Quad is an AMD Quad it would seem...



freaksavior said:


> I have to agree with newtekie1 on this one. New system with outdated os and hard drive is just asking for trouble. Upgrade the hard drive to something more mordern and jump on the windows 7 bandwagon. You'll see a good bit of speed difference.



Yeah, I just did the Novatech benchmark on the server I'm working on with a 2.5" 5400RPM laptop hard drive as the OS drive, and it gets write speeds of 55MB/s.  So if he is only getting 6MB/s, I can guarantee the hard drive is the issue.


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## theeldest (Jul 7, 2011)

newtekie1 said:


> Yeah, I just did the Novatech benchmark on the server I'm working on with a 2.5" 5400RPM laptop hard drive as the OS drive, and it gets write speeds of 55MB/s.  So if he is only getting 6MB/s, I can guarantee the hard drive is the issue.



+1

I had a server where I dropped in an older drive for the OS. Took forever to bootup and was generally slow. Benchmarked the drive and had 5MB/s sequential read speeds. 

Western Digital Caviar Blue WD3200AAKS 320GB 7200 ...

Single platter drive. Do it.


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## TC-man (Jul 7, 2011)

newtekie1 said:


> A lot of people just don't recognize the difference between a Phenom 2 and Athlon 2, they assume they are interchangable.  An AMD Quad is an AMD Quad it would seem...



Well, AMD didn't help bij renaming their newer Athlon II X4 into e.g. the Phenom II X4 840. 



newtekie1 said:


> Yeah, I just did the Novatech benchmark on the server I'm working on with a 2.5" 5400RPM laptop hard drive as the OS drive, and it gets write speeds of 55MB/s.  So if he is only getting 6MB/s, I can guarantee the hard drive is the issue.



Perhaps he needs to install some ide/motherboard drivers (if there's one), since it feels like the harddrive is running in PIO mode, and that's really slow.


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## erixx (Jul 7, 2011)

I was going to add, but it is pretty much solved: Windows XP is not for over 4 Gig of RAM (just doesn't see it, will never, you need a 64bit O.S., like Vista, 7 in their 64bit version. I do not recommend Win XP 64, a rarity)

Anyways, the BIOS setting is on the page where the Northbridge settings are, iirc. Next time I restart I will look at the naming (althout each mobo brand use their own obscurities)


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## Completely Bonkers (Jul 7, 2011)

I've got a pentium 4 IDE system here. I'll go and download Novabench so you have some comparative performance statistics. This might help pinpoint the problem.

I do agree with others that the HDD "system" might be the issue. But it might not be the drive, per se, but the chipset or the cable. Performance of IDE and 160GB should be fine for your build. People often think "older" is "legacy" is "dinosaur" is "terrible performance". IMO, there is something else wrong. Either the HDD is suffering due to hardware failure, or the controller, or the cable, or possibly do you also have an IDE CD Drive, which could cause incompatibility. Put it on a separate channel.

Do you have another IDE cable you can try? I remember terrible problems with a system once... and no amount of diagnosing got to the problem until I swapped the cable. It was the IDE cable that was to blame. The "error checking/correction" of the drive and chipset resulted in poor performance rather than failure... and this meant it was harder to discover. 

It is a quick and easy fix to try. Get a different IDE cable, plug it into the OTHER channel and dont plug in any CD drives.

***EDIT*** Results of Novabench, hope it helps


> NovaBench Score: 204
> 
> 07/07/2011 23:59:23
> Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Standard Edition
> ...


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## yogurt_21 (Jul 7, 2011)

Completely Bonkers said:


> I've got a pentium 4 IDE system here. I'll go and download Novabench so you have some comparative performance statistics. This might help pinpoint the problem.
> 
> I do agree with others that the HDD "system" might be the issue. But it might not be the drive, per se, but the chipset or the cable. Performance of IDE and 160GB should be fine for your build. People often think "older" is "legacy" is "dinosaur" is "terrible performance". IMO, there is something else wrong. Either the HDD is suffering due to hardware failure, or the controller, or the cable, or possibly do you also have an IDE CD Drive, which could cause incompatibility. Put it on a separate channel.
> 
> ...



you're still talking 29MB/s vs a modern SATA drives 120MB/s. Still way slower even if the ide drive is working.



edit: added the novabench scores from my work pc as a reference, this is a 160GB sata drive, 8GB of 1333 memory with an e7500 cpu, this should be around the same or less performance as the op's rig should put out properly configured.



> 7/7/2011 3:23:45 PM
> Microsoft Windows 7 Professional
> Intel Core2 Duo E7500 2.93GHz @ 2926 MHz
> Graphics Card: ATI Radeon HD 3450 - Dell Optiplex
> ...


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## qubit (Jul 7, 2011)

Besides the HD sounding very much like the issue, running 32-bit XP Home with 8GB may cripple it too. Remove RAM until you have just 2GB left and see how it runs. This is so quick and easy, that you should do this before you swap out the HD or anything else.


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## Jetster (Jul 7, 2011)

Mighty Boosh said:


> Hello mate,
> 
> The IDE is the one with the OS on so thats not an option right now.
> 
> ...







1. Get a 64 bit OS perferably Windows 7 or you will not see all 8 Gb (Do some reading) The extra ram is just sitting there doing nothing

2. Get a new Harddrive as your primary. SATA 7200 do not partition the OS so small do not use IDE as primary

3. Your CPU is a Athlon II X4 not a AMD Phenom II X4.                          Big difference


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## Completely Bonkers (Jul 8, 2011)

yogurt_21 said:


> you're still talking 29MB/s vs a modern SATA drives 120MB/s. Still way slower even if the ide drive is working.



Oh, I'm not saying an IDE performs anywhere near a SATA. But my old P4 IDE 160GB is running 30GB/s whereas Boosh is getting just 6GB/s. An IDE is OK. He doesnt need to buy a new HDD, just needs to get THAT IDE working properly, assuming this is possible. Something is clearly wrong with his IDE or IDE channel or cable.

Here, Boosh, check your HDD in Control Panel/System/Device and report back with channel properties. See this example:






And this from speccy:


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## Dent1 (Jul 8, 2011)

Jetster said:


> 1. Get a 64 bit OS perferably Windows 7 or you will not see all 8 Gb (Do some reading) The extra ram is just sitting there doing nothing
> 
> 2. Get a new Harddrive as your primary. SATA 7200 do not partition the OS so small do not use IDE as primary
> 
> *3. Your CPU is a Athlon II X4 not a AMD Phenom II X4.                          Big difference*



I agree with everything you said except that. The difference is small, typically less than 10%.

The AMD Athlon II X4 645 @ 3114 MHz will be just as fast as a Phenom II 920 2.8GHz typically.


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## 1nf3rn0x (Jul 8, 2011)

8gb of ram cannot be used under a 32bit OS. DURP.
And yes seems like HDD is slow... Buy a SATA II/III 7200RPM and install all OS and programs on it.

AND FYI. If you thought your CPU was PII but it's a Athlon II you might of got ripped off?


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## javaking (Jul 8, 2011)

Was this your first build make sure you downloaded the ide drivers off the disc that came with motherboard.


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## Mighty Boosh (Jul 8, 2011)

Completely Bonkers said:


> Oh, I'm not saying an IDE performs anywhere near a SATA. But my old P4 IDE 160GB is running 30GB/s whereas Boosh is getting just 6GB/s. An IDE is OK. He doesnt need to buy a new HDD, just needs to get THAT IDE working properly, assuming this is possible. Something is clearly wrong with his IDE or IDE channel or cable.
> 
> Here, Boosh, check your HDD in Control Panel/System/Device and report back with channel properties. See this example:
> http://img.techpowerup.org/110707/Capture009.png




First of all, huge thanks to all that have took the time to reply!!!    

@ Completely Bonkers.

Did what you asked mate, I have attached a snapshot of my IDE channel's props. 

As for everything else. I can certainly see the logic in not using an IDE channel over a SATA channel so this will be something I can certainly do something about. The honest truth is although I guessed there would be some kind of performance loss I really never expected it to be so noticeable! Fact is, I had an unused IDE HDD that I thought I would use and keep my SATA ports for other things such as drive bay, opticals etc, bad move it would seem. Remedy, i'll get a 4 port SATA PCI card then I wont have to use the IDE channel, will also get a small SATA drive for the OS. I have a hot swap drive bay for file storage and the majority of programs I expect to use. I am determined to keep the OS seperate as I have twise had to reinstall my OS and lose everything as it was all on the same drive so for the last few years I have kept things seperate. Worked well for me so far.

As for running a 32 bit system, again, it was lack of knowledge on my part. Didn't realise that the OS wouldn't see all the available RAM so this is my next Q. As a user of a completely legit registered version of XP, can I just update to Windows 7 using a product like this?

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Microsoft-Windows-7-Ultimate-Upgrade-Version-/220808533823?pt=UK_Computing_Software_Software_SR&hash=item336936d73f

What I dont want to do is waste money on something that isn't what I need.

Cheers everyone!


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## Mighty Boosh (Jul 8, 2011)

javaking said:


> Was this your first build make sure you downloaded the ide drivers off the disc that came with motherboard.



Meant to say as well, yes, all drivers installed that came with the mobo. Also, this was my second build. Bit more involved though than my first


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## Peter1986C (Jul 8, 2011)

Mighty Boosh said:


> Q. As a user of a completely legit registered version of XP, can I just update to Windows 7 using a product like this?
> 
> http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Microsoft-Wind...item336936d73f
> 
> What I dont want to do is waste money on something that isn't what I need.



No, you have a home version of XP, that upgrade is of the "business" branch AFAIK. And When going from XP to Win 7, best do a fresh install because the difference is so big an update is simply asking for things to go wrong. Get a full disk so that you can do a fresh install, and Home is enough it gives all you need and takes less disk space too (and is a lot cheaper).


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## yogurt_21 (Jul 8, 2011)

Chevalr1c said:


> No, you have a home version of XP, that upgrade is of the "business" branch AFAIK. And When going from XP to Win 7, best do a fresh install because the difference is so big an update is simply asking for things to go wrong. Get a full disk so that you can do a fresh install, and Home is enough it gives all you need and takes less disk space too (and is a lot cheaper).



win 7 upgrade discs can do a fresh install. 

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/1649-clean-install-windows-7-a.html

steps 6-8.


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## Mighty Boosh (Jul 8, 2011)

OK, going off on a bit of a tangent now. I still run some proigramms that are a little 'dated' shall we say and I'm quite sure that they wont be supported by W7. This being the case I would like to run a dual boot configuration. Now I know this can be done by creating a partion on my main HDD and installing W7 to it, but..........................

....as I already have XP plus other stuff already installed on my IDE HDD, can I not set that drive as a slave and run XP and other apps from it. Then install a new SATA HDD and install W7 to that?

Is this possible or do I have to install both OS's to a partitioned single HDD?


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## Hayder_Master (Jul 8, 2011)

I agree too with win 7 64 bit idea‏,‏‎ and why u still hold XP on patition? Repartiton format it remove IDE HDD and install win 7 on sata HDD, when finish plag it again the IDE.


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## qubit (Jul 8, 2011)

Mighty Boosh said:


> OK, going off on a bit of a tangent now. I still run some proigramms that are a little 'dated' shall we say and I'm quite sure that they wont be supported by W7. This being the case I would like to run a dual boot configuration. Now I know this can be done by creating a partion on my main HDD and installing W7 to it, but..........................
> 
> ....as I already have XP plus other stuff already installed on my IDE HDD, can I not set that drive as a slave and run XP and other apps from it. Then install a new SATA HDD and install W7 to that?
> 
> Is this possible or do I have to install both OS's to a partitioned single HDD?



You are free to install XP & 7 on both separate hard discs or on the same hard disc, depending on your preference. There are a few gotchas you've got to be aware of, of course. 

Both on one disc:

- You must partition the hard disc to make room for the two operating systems. There's various ways to do this, one of them being to run HDM that I recommended and is likely the easiest. Even Windows has a partitioning tool, but it's very limited

- If possible, install XP first and it must be on a _primary_ partition, preferably the first one and must _not_ be an extended one

- If installing XP second, you will overwrite the boot record for 7 and you will only be able to boot into XP. This can be fixed though. Google for it and it should point to an MS article on it. It's quite fiddly, but there are likely to be automated tools to help with this nowadays


Separate discs:

- Partition both discs, as appropriate. Note blanking all partitions on a disc and installing XP or 7 will lead to a default config where Windows will use the whole disc

- Unplug the one you're not installing on. This is because the Windows installer loves fiddling with the boot sector on every drive it sees, which can lead to dependency problems where you need the wrong drive in the system in order to boot and it's fiddly to correct. This is certainly true for XP, 7 seems to be alright with this. However, it's safer to unplug anyway.


*Finally, if you're new to disc partitioning, I strongly recommend that you read up on it first. Screwing it up can lead to complete data loss in the blink of an eye - no kidding!*


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## Completely Bonkers (Jul 9, 2011)

MBoosh,

Good you did the screenshot. See! You are in HDD transfer mode *PIO mode*. That is serious legacy and the cause of your problems.  You must be using a VERY OLD cable! Get a new ribbon cable for that drive! Make sure you are running the latest drivers for that mainboard. Is this a fresh install... or did you "bring and existing installation" over to the new mainboard? Install latest nVidia driver sets. Then, using control panel "remove hardware" and remove the HDD controllers. Then reboot and let Windows reinstall the drivers. Check that transfer mode. You should be UDMA 5 or 6, not PIO! If that doesnt work try running sysprep (google it)


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## Jetster (Jul 9, 2011)

You can download windows 7 and try for free for 30 days. If you buy it buy it from a retail seller not e-bay. You can get a OEM for cheep.  And you cant upgrade a 32 bit OS to 64 bit. 

Also if you don't have enough SATA ports. Use the IDE channel for the optical drive.

And CB is right about the IDE  PIO mode and the cable. That would be your main issue  God SATA is so much nicer


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## francis511 (Jul 9, 2011)

Completely Bonkers said:


> MBoosh,
> 
> Good you did the screenshot. See! You are in HDD transfer mode *PIO mode*. That is serious legacy and the cause of your problems.



Well THERE`S your problem ! Also try switching pio mode to dma mode....


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## animal007uk (Jul 9, 2011)

Check the cable on that IDE hardrive and make sure its right one, If memory serves me right there are 2 types of IDE cable, The very old ones with 40 wires in it and then the newer ones with 80 wires in it, Make sure your using one of the newer types.

You can usualy tell the diffrence just by looking at them as the one with 40 wires in it will look like the wires are bigger than the one with 80 wires, hope that makes sense.


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## Jetster (Jul 9, 2011)

The old 40 pin cables also had no tab. So could be plugged in ether way. Plus the 80 cable has a different color end for the MB end.


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## silkstone (Jul 9, 2011)

If you are going to get a new hard drive and only use it as an OS drive, you might want to look at getting a cheap SSD if capacity isn;t an issue. You can pick up a 40gb SSD really cheap these days and you will notice a huge improvement over your current drive.


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## Mighty Boosh (Jul 10, 2011)

Well after stacks of suggestions I have finally got this bird to fly. As many of you suggested the problem was two fold in that the OS was outdated to the hardware that was powering it and also the IDE HDD was also an issue.

Well below is the previous results from Novabench using XP Home and an IDE drive.



Mighty Boosh said:


> Hello mate,
> 
> *07/07/2011 13:06:56
> Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition
> ...




And after changing the OS to W7 and installing a SATA drive you get this.......

*7/10/2011 2:25:09 PM
Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate
AMD Athlon II X4 645 @ 3112 MHz
Graphics Card: NVIDIA GeForce 7025 / NVIDIA nForce 630a

8160 MB System RAM (Score: 151)
- RAM Speed: 3198 MB/s

CPU Tests (Score: 396)
- Floating Point Operations/Second: 103283908
- Integer Operations/Second: 347129068
- MD5 Hashes Generated/Second: 835343

Graphics Tests (Score: 7)
- 3D Frames Per Second: 29

Hardware Tests (Score: 24)
- Primary Partition Capacity: 153 GB
- Drive Write Speed: 129 MB/s *


And this was with a few apps running, the score was 578!

Bottom line is that this baby runs great now. Very quick and runs 2 or 3 apps with complete ease!

All I have to do now is get to grips with W7. Had to Google how to add a Run cmd 

Thanks again all that helped!  

Chris


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## Peter1986C (Jul 10, 2011)

Mighty Boosh said:


> RAM Speed: 3198 MB/s



In your spec list you are stating that you are using DDR3-1333 RAM. So either there is a bad detection here (by the programme used) or your BIOS settings are incorrect.

This is not meant to moan, just my two cents (further optimisation possible, if I am right. I could be very wrong here too, though).


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## Mighty Boosh (Jul 10, 2011)

According to the mobo details even down to the packaging (I know that doesn't mean anything) its a dual DDR3-1333. Thats all I have to go with. At the risk of confirming my inexperience with all this (if I havent already done so!) how can you tell from that Novabench result that I posted?

Edit: What sort of speeds would you expect? Also, maybe you could suggest another benchmark app to try to see if I get conflicting results?


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## Jetster (Jul 10, 2011)

Good job, you will love 7


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## Peter1986C (Jul 11, 2011)

Chevalr1c said:


> In your spec list you are stating that you are using DDR3-1333 RAM. So either there is a bad detection here (by the programme used) or your BIOS settings are incorrect.
> 
> This is not meant to moan, just my two cents (further optimisation possible, if I am right. I could be very wrong here too, though).





Mighty Boosh said:


> According to the mobo details even down to the packaging (I know that doesn't mean anything) its a dual DDR3-1333. Thats all I have to go with. At the risk of confirming my inexperience with all this (if I havent already done so!) how can you tell from that Novabench result that I posted?
> 
> Edit: What sort of speeds would you expect? Also, maybe you could suggest another benchmark app to try to see if I get conflicting results?



I know that Memtest86+ v 4.20 detects the bandwidth of my RAM at 4735 mb/s (I have pc-8500 DDR2-1066), but that may be a falsely detected value. So I just meant to say that I found it weird, unless your program misdetected it (which I have seen happening too, on my pc). Most likely it's lastmentioned. It's not really a big deal. Else manually setting the clock frequency and timings (instead of "auto") might make a difference (especially Crucial and OCZ sticks seem to like manual settings).

Edit: If anyone thinks I am acting silly here for some reason, just say so and will I stand corrected.


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## newtekie1 (Jul 11, 2011)

Chevalr1c said:


> I know that Memtest86+ v 4.20 detects the bandwidth of my RAM at 4735 mb/s (I have pc-8500 DDR2-1066), but that may be a falsely detected value. So I just meant to say that I found it weird, unless your program misdetected it (which I have seen happening too, on my pc). Most likely it's lastmentioned. It's not really a big deal. Else manually setting the clock frequency and timings (instead of "auto") might make a difference (especially Crucial and OCZ sticks seem to like manual settings).
> 
> Edit: If anyone thinks I am acting silly here for some reason, just say so and will I stand corrected.



I agree, there might be something off there as well.  My system with DDR3-1600 scores 10,500MB/s in Novabench.

At first I thought it might be an issue with the RAM only running in single channel, due to sticks being in the wrong slot, but that is impossible with the setup.  The motherboard only has 2 slots, and with 8GB of RAM they are both populated, which would force dual channel.

So my next guess would be that the memory isn't running at full speed.  So adjusting it in the BIOS is probably necessary.

A CPU-Z screenshot of the memory tab would be good.


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## Mighty Boosh (Jul 11, 2011)

newtekie1 said:


> A CPU-Z screenshot of the memory tab would be good.



You ask, I get


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## JrRacinFan (Jul 11, 2011)

The part marked in red is another issue. That should be running @ 2k by default. I remember needing to do something in VID control in motherboard settings. I will look at your board's manual see if I can read anything that rings a bell to my memory and re-post.


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## Mighty Boosh (Jul 11, 2011)

Thanks JR


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## JrRacinFan (Jul 11, 2011)

AMD Overclock configuration. Enable custom P states and raise NB FID to 2000 in that menu.






Should make a little difference. You are quite welcome!


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## Mighty Boosh (Jul 11, 2011)

I have to say, I spent a lot of time going thru my BIOS settings the other week and I really cant remember seeing anything like that. I'll reboot now and take a look.


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## JrRacinFan (Jul 11, 2011)

Mighty Boosh said:


> I have to say, I spent a lot of time going thru my BIOS settings the other week and I really cant remember seeing anything like that. I'll reboot now and take a look.



Yeah it should be labeled something of the nature of  "Custom P states" or such. Cant remember the exact name.


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## Mighty Boosh (Jul 11, 2011)

Right, just browsed thru the BIOS. Cannot see anything relating to P States or AMD Overclocking Config I'm afraid.


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## JrRacinFan (Jul 11, 2011)

@Brandon

I see you peaking. You got any ideas? I can't remember exactly where it is in bios. I had a Biostar 760G based not long ago about a year but only had it for a week or 2.


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## brandonwh64 (Jul 11, 2011)

Under memory configuration it SHOULD have AMD Overclocking Configuration. Take another hard look cause the manual SAYS its there.


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## Mighty Boosh (Jul 11, 2011)

Took another look and still cant see anything for it. Ive attached the screen shot for you to see. I'll also attach the PDF manual for my mainboard as well.

Edit: Site wont let me upload the PDF manual so here's a link to where it is on Biostar's site.

http://www.biostar.com.tw/app/en/mb/content.php?S_ID=506


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