Slow system, very weird

[fref]

Hi!

Several of the PCs I've built lately have had this weird problem that I just don't understand. When I boot the PC with the Windows Vista DVD in the drive, the setup program starts fine, but is suspiciously slow. When I see the fancy blue and green background appear, it takes about 3-4 minutes before the language window appears! This is on a Core 2 Duo E6600 system. I've tried the same thing on my own PC, an old P4C 3.0Ghz, and the language window comes up in only a few seconds.

So anyway, the first time this happened, I thought I had a defective part in the computer, so I unplugged everything that was not essential and replaced pretty much everything else with different parts (low end video card, RAM and CPU). No change. I swapped the motherboard for another (identical) one. Still no change. At that point, I figured nothing was wrong with the hardware and decided to let Vista install comletely and see what would happen. Everything went fine, and after installing all drivers, Vista gave the system a score of 5.4, which is pretty good. Games run fine too. However, I noticed that driver installation was also quite slow.

That was on an Asus P5B-Deluxe motherboard. I built another system with that motherboard later on, and had the same behavior. Recently, I built one with an Asus P5B (non-Deluxe), and again, I had the same problem. These boards aren't even using the same chipset. It's like everything that installs from a CD/DVD is slow. Then again, I'm not sure it's only that because on that first system I mentioned, I had enough drives connected to have the drive list displayed at POST require some scrolling, and I could actually see the text scroll up slowly (kinda like when you film a computer screen with a video camera). Even the screen redraw in the BIOS was noticeable to the eye. I remind you that I did try using another video card. And yes, I also installed the latest BIOS version from Asus' web site.

So, did anyone experience this problem too? Have you found a way to fix this?

Thanks!

 

[Puffnstuff]

Did you use the same dvd drive on both systems?

 

[fref]

No, I remember the first system was using a Pioneer SATA DVD burner (212D) and the latest one I built with the P5B had a Pioneer IDE DVD burner (112D). I'm pretty sure I also tried another drive (some other brand CD-RW drive) on the first system, and the problem was still there.

 

[bamacre]

Using the same dvd disk to install Vista?

 

[fref]

Yes, same DVD, but as I said, the problem does not occur on my own computer with that same disk, an my computer is way slower than the computers I've been assembling lately. Also, driver installation from the motherboard CD was rather slow too, so it's definitely not a disk problem since multiple disks behave the same.

My bet is still on the motherboard. Anyone has a computer built using either an Asus P5B or P5B-Deluxe motherboard? Is it slow too when installing Vista?

 

[ronach]

You have checked on what DMA mode your drives are running at in the bios Right ?

 

[fref]

No, I haven't, actually. I'll take a look next time I build a system with one of these boards if it still exibits the same problem, but I'd be really surprised if that was the cause. Why would that make screen updates noticeably slow in the BIOS where the DVD drive is not even in use?

 

[greatfool66]

I would bet on the disk, the drives or possibly both. I've had several Pioneer drives fail.

 

[programmer]

Do you have Microsoft OneCare installed?

 

[fref]

No, I don't have Microsoft OneCare installed. I'm not familiar with it, would that help identify the problem?

 

[hardbench]

I would chalk this up to either the disk used, the Pioneer drives, or the Asus P5B boards since these are common elements in your builds... A Vista install disk is an image of an install, so we are just taslking about it taking longer than other installs here...could be a DMA issue as well as the other poster alluded to. I'd check that in the BIOS.