Occasional slow OS insalling

[kplaks]

Question: I've noticed a strange phenomena that I was wondering if anyone has seen.

I'm building a new system and I've been having trouble loading Vista from a Samsung DVD player. I've had to Install the DVD several times (so far unsuccessfully). It turns out I have a bad HDD, however that's not my question. I have noticed that the amount of time it takes to go from post to the step where you load drivers on the install DVD either happens fast (1 min) or really, really slow >10 min. Since it is the same system, I find this very weird. Sometimes its fast, sometimes slow.

At the same time, the bootloader got corrupted on my other computer (a P4 with IDE drive). I had to reload linux (it is dual boot ubuntu/XP) Both XP and ubuntu were insanely slow to load off the installer CD. I gave up on XP because it took so long, and Ubuntu took over an hour, vice the ~5 min it took to install originally.

Am I smoking something, or has anyone else noticed this type of thing. Extra credit: how do I make it go fast always

 

[leSLIe]

so is your HD SATA?
cuz if it's PATA, the DVD and the HD should be on different flats to maximize performance

and make sure that your DVD is on DMA instead of PIO mode on your BIOS

 

[kplaks]

HD is sata on new box, pata on old box. On old box, cd is on a different IDE channel

 

[Joe Average]

so is your HD SATA?
cuz if it's PATA, the DVD and the HD should be on different flats to maximize performance

and make sure that your DVD is on DMA instead of PIO mode on your BIOS

The BIOS settings won't matter with respect to DMA or PIO - Windows calls aren't going through the BIOS even during setup. BIOS calls are 16 bit, Windows calls are 32 bit so, when Windows makes a request to the CD/DVD drive, it's communicating directly with the hardware through the HAL - the BIOS doesn't even factor into the equation.

 

[Astronomica]

I've been doing some motherboard and OS swapping recently and i've had these problems myself. Sometimes it would take 10-15 minute just to reach the first page of the install where it asks for your cd key and other times it takes only a minute.