Windows XP x64 is slow.

[Churnd]

I'm using an HP xw8200 workstation. The BIOS settings are at their defaults, with hyperthreading enabled. This workstation dual boots openSuSE x86_64 linux. Linux runs great. However, when I boot into Windows, it runs much slower.

The hardware is as follows:
-2 Intel Xeon dual core procs
-8GB RAM
-150GB OS HD
-500GB Data HD
-ATI FireGL V5200 GPU

The OS HD stores the Windows and Linux operating system partitions. Windows is up to date with the latest drivers from HP's website sans the GPU driver, which I got from ATI's website. When updating the drivers didn't help, I booted to the XP x64 cd and ran a chkdsk /r from the recovery console. This didn't help either.

I have downloaded and used the HP Insight Diagnostics CD and ran a full test on all hardware. The 500GB hard drive failed the extended offline test. I unplugged it and tried booting into Windows again, but the slowness persisted.

To further test, I have completely reformatted the Windows partition, and reinstalled Windows XP x64, reinstalled all drivers, which did not help. I even installed this copy of XP x64 on a different machine to verify the CD wasn't messed up, and that machine works fine.

I am at loss... I can't think of what else it could possibly be. There is nothing running on Windows that would slow it down this much. There is a clone of this system on the other side of where I work that's set up exactly the same, and it runs great. I know it points to a hardware issue, but the HP diags didn't pick up anything but the hard drive itself. My only other guess is a bad motherboard but how do I know for sure?

Thanks in advance!

 

[Churnd]

bump for the morning traffic

 

[mechBgon]

When you say it's slower, does that manifest itself in benchmarks (say, compressing files with a file-compression utility that has both Linux and Windows versions), or it feels sluggish at the GUI level, or what are the symptoms exactly?

 

[Churnd]

It feels slower overall. It's like it speeds up, then slows down, then speeds up again for no reason. I'm thinking it has something to do with hyperthreading being enabled, because I went over to the othe workstation where I work this morning and saw that it was in fact disabled there. I enabled it to test, and saw the same results... slowness.

I know the original workstation has two dual core Xeon procs. If I do not have hyperthreading enabled, Task Manager only shows two cores. If I enable it, I see all 4. So now my question would be, how do I get all 4 cores available if I can't use hyperthreading?

 

[Churnd]

Well, enabling/disabling hyperthreading doesn't seem to be making a difference.

It's more like HDD access is slow. It takes much longer to boot up than equivalent workstations around here. Anytime the hard drive gets used, it's slow. Say I launch a program. It takes much longer to start up. However, when I close it and launch it again, it's instantaneous because it's still in memory.

From what I know, it could be either the chipset drivers, the motherboard (specifically the SATA channel the HD uses), or the HD itself. I have the latest chipset drivers from HP's website, though they are dated back to 2005. Windows update doesn't show anything newer. HP Insight Diags didn't show a problem with the main OS HD. I'm trying the manufacturer's diags as I type this.

 

[btcomm1]

http://winhlp.com/node/10

 

[Churnd]

Originally posted by: btcomm1
http://winhlp.com/node/10

Does that still apply to SATA drives?

 

[Churnd]

Ok now we're getting somewhere. The drive was set to PIO in BIOS. It had 4 settings:

-PIO 0
-Max PIO
-Ultra DMA 0
-Max UDMA

I changed it to Max UDMA, and drive access is back up to 60 mb/s. Before, it was 3 mb/s.

However, the system still seems somewhat slow compared to others around it even though device manager says the primary ATA channel is in Ultra DMA 5 mode. Are there other settings I should check?

 

[blurrr]

It could be a sluggish rotary drive in the HDD, the only way to fix that is replacement.