I reformatted HD just recently but my computer is still slow i dont know why ... usually it should work faster. Im thinking may be i need to get memory card or something. If anybody knows anything about this Help will be Appreciated Thank YOU
Check device manager for the drive for the transfer mode. Should be something like UDM5, if it's PIO you will need to have XP rebuild the driver. Easy to do.
You might be a little lite on the ram, usually 512 works good with XP. It may be three years old but don't write it off. By todays standards im slow without duel or quad cores but it does everything I need it to do. The term slow depends on what you are doing at any given time. I think some extra memory is your best shot. If your short on memory it has to do alot of disc writes to keep up. Good luck!
Still scratching my head over "xp will need to rebuild the driver"... In the device manager, any drive in PIO mode just needs to be set to DMA If Available. That's it. This is only possible however, if in some cases, the PIO mode was set for that device in the BIOS...which it isn't normally. If you want your system to run fast with 256MB of ram, shut off all the themes, cursor effects, etc, by right clicking My Computer, go to Properties. Click on the Advanced tab, then Settings under Performance. Check "Adjust for best performance" and click Apply. Also, you may want to shut down unneeded services. http://www.beemerworld.com/tips/servicesxp.htm
yea I was thinking this machine need more memory lol and ill try to adjust it to best performance thanx a lot
@ Morph: Anything stuck in PIO will not fix itself by simpley clicking use DMA mode. The ide channel needs to be blown away (uninstalled) then rebooted for the OS to rediscover the drive and it's new settings. This is well documented even on the microsoft site. I doubt he has anything stuck in PIO because that would make things work real slow if at all but the check is free and easy. An 80 conductor IDE cable VS. the 40 conductor type could also be another bottle neck. Those UDM numbers are important as well as the size and location of the paging files and even the frag of the discs.
Everyone has different experiences I suppose, but I've never had to do anything more than just select "DMA if available". No reboots, no uninstalls...no set backs. 80 pin IDE cables transfer up to the ATA133/150 spec, though 40 pin can be stuck at the ATA33 spec. So far in my experiences however, I've never seen a hard drive in PIO mode...even by default. Only CD/DVD drives and older ones at that.
I have never seen a HDD in Pio either but I have seen them in DMA2 through DMA5. I think the key word here is "but my computer is still slow i dont know why ... usually it should work faster" Not much to go by, no before and after performance data / benchmark. With 256K it has to be older.
