Slow boot and defrag

[GN85]

Hi guys, have another problem with the comp that I built for a friend. Windows XP x64 is booting and defragging very slowly. I've tested this with different defrag software. What's odd is that games run very smoothly, so we can pretty much rule out everything else (like ram), correct? I'm 99% sure this is a hard drive issue, and if not, something is probably misconfigured.

What would you guys recommend for a good hard drive benchmark/diagnosis tool? Also any idea as to what the problem may be?

Specs:

ASUS P5Q Pro
Intel Core 2 Duo 8400
G.SKILL 4GB (2 x 2GB)
Sapphire HD 4870 1G
Western Digital Caviar SE16 WD6400AAKS
Corsair 750 TX

Thanks in advance!

 

[engiNURD]

Run HDTune and post your results.

Hm... also, if you can, run HDTune with the drive hooked up to a win32 machine and post the results. I'm thinking its a driver issue.

 

[GN85]

Seems normal? Transfer rate is twice as fast as on my computer, which boots up at least 5 times quicker than my friend's.

 

[engiNURD]

Seems normal? Transfer rate is twice as fast as on my computer, which boots up at least 5 times quicker than my friend's.

http://img175.imageshack.us/img175/1814/c16488lf6.jpg

Is that test on your drive or your friend's? The results of that image are typical for that drive. So, if he's getting less, then something is definitely wrong. If you're getting higher than that image, what are the specs of your system? lol.

 

[GN85]

Nono those are his specs, the specs of the slow booting computer. I just ran HDtune on my athlon XP system with an old IDE drive and noted that his HDD was twice as fast as mine.

If there seems nothing wrong with his drive, what else can the problem be?

 

[engiNURD]

Are any additional devices connect to his system at startup? USB devices, in particular. Run msconfig and remove any unneeded programs at startup, and disable any unneeded services.