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This build is soooooo sloooooow!

I

InvaderSevlow

n00b
Joined
Mar 20, 2008
Messages
25
Can someone on [H] point out what I've done wrong with my HTPC build that would cause it to be so freaking slow?
First off, here's the specs:

Intel DG45ID, latest BIOS & drivers
E8500, stock cooler
RAM- I've gone from 2GB(2x 1GB) PC2-5400 to 4GB(4x 1GB) PC2-6400 to 4GB (2x 2GB) PC2-8500 Kingston Hyperx that's in it currently
HD- 120GB WD IDE replaced with 250GB WD SATA drive replaced with 4x 4GB Transcend 300x CF cards (via SATA adapters) in raid 0 configuration
OS- Vista Ultimate x64

The main issue I've been having- its SLOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOW! Painfully slow! Slow to boot, slow to use media center, slow to shut down! I started the build with 2x 1GB ram, then upgraded to 4x 1GB, then to 2x 2GB. Going 2GB to 4GB helped a tiny bit, but thats it. So I tried upgrading the hard drive (IDE drive w/sata adapter as the mobo has no IDE ports) with a sata drive, but that didnt help so I went all out with 4x 4GB Transcend 300x CF cards and CF to SATA adapters configured in raid 0. Now of course a standard Vista install is waaaaay too bloated to fit on 16GB, so I rebuilt it with vLite. I integrated SP1/hotfixes and removed any bits not relating directly to my HTPC operations (no languages, Nvidia/Ati drivers, tablet support, etc) which brought the installation size down to about 12GB. But it remains SLOW! Maybe a tad bit faster than the full installation but not at all what it should be with 4GB ram and those raided CF cards!

For shins & giggles I even tried-
a.) Disabling the paging file
b.) Moving the paging file to a 1GB usb flash drive
c.) Disabling the paging file and letting readyboost use the entire 1GB usb flash drive
All without success.

Last night I finally pulled out a stopwatch and timed the startup process, keep in mind this is with the most current configuration and is an IMPROVEMENT over what it used to be:
~ 30 seconds to post
~ 2 minutes from post completion to get to the login screen
~ 30 seconds from login to be usable

For comparison, both my [dated] workstation (3.4ghz P4/2gb ram/x32) and game rig (q6600/4gb ram/x64) run vista and neither of them takes even half as long to boot as the HTPC!

Suggestions? Anyone?
 
maybe a bad motherboard.. dunno if that board has a splash screen but hopefully its disabled and you can see what its doing on boot.. is the slow down when you get to vista or before vista even starts loading?

first id check to see what your board is doing after post.. if its doing a memory check or if its just being slow as crap at hdd detection.. because for example my m2n-sli board takes about 30-45 seconds from start to windows loading due to the horrific way they have the raid detection setup..
 
probably the raid. I'd snag a single fast drive and see what happens.
 
stevedave said:
probably the raid. I'd snag a single fast drive and see what happens.
Click to expand...

Already covered this,

InvaderSevlow said:
"HD- 120GB WD IDE replaced with 250GB WD SATA drive replaced with 4x 4GB Transcend 300x CF cards (via SATA adapters) in raid 0 configuration"

"So I tried upgrading the hard drive (IDE drive w/sata adapter as the mobo has no IDE ports) with a sata drive, but that didnt help so I went all out with 4x 4GB Transcend 300x CF cards and CF to SATA adapters configured in raid 0."
Click to expand...

Now granted that SATA drive I used was no Raptor, but it still made no difference.
 
Have you ran the computer naked? I once had a computer than ran slow as hell in it's case but normal when I took it out, turns out it was hitting something it didn't like inside the case, put it in a new case and boosh run perfect.
 
maybe a diff mouse or keyboard? I know it sounds stupid and i wouldn't have believed it if someone else had told me, but if I have my fatal1ty laser mouse plugged in my computer will just sit there on the post screen forever when i start it up, i can unplug it and it goes ahead and boots up. If I plug in after windows is up and running everything is all good. Never seen anything like it.
 
OS- Vista Ultimate x64 <---------- Problem identified. Vista = slow.
 
too much stuff here to identify, unplug everything and then start over. otherwise rma the board

honestly with a crazy setup like thus you just need to simplify it.

vista isnt slow..... i run vista on my eee pc w. single core atom cpu and itss fast


what is thewrite speed on the cf cards, why not just buy a ssd instead of that 4 drive cf setup?
 
dnottis said:
OS- Vista Ultimate x64 <---------- Problem identified. Vista = slow.
Click to expand...

I beg to differ.

I had Vista Home premium x64 on my HTPC with an E8500, 2x2GB and a 3870 with no slowdown issues. Anyways to the OP try a fresh install of Windows and see what happens. What other programs are you running? Sounds like something is eating up you system resources. Did you run a virus/adware scan?
 
Also the IDE drive and the 250gb SATA drive aren't terribly fast hard drives. Something like the WD640 would speed things up considerably. I'm not sure that's your problem, but it may be a factor.
 
Thank you everyone who replied! Multiple responses here so bear with me:

stevedave said:
Have you ran the computer naked?
Click to expand...

No I have not! Its worth a try!


2dirty said:
maybe a diff mouse or keyboard?
Click to expand...

I'll give this a try before the above.


dnottis said:
OS- Vista Ultimate x64 <---------- Problem identified. Vista = slow.
Click to expand...

LOL! Yes I agree Vista is bloated and slow! However the fact that it dosent run as slow on either my workstation or game rig should say something. Dont forget the rebuild that stripped out 2/3 of its bloat should have sped things up a bit!


Adidas4275 said:
what is thewrite speed on the cf cards, why not just buy a ssd instead of that 4 drive cf setup?
Click to expand...

300x Transcend. SSD's are still a bit too spendy for me. Now the 4 drive cf setup I could justify because if it doesn't work out I can still split it up for use in cameras and dedicated use lite XP installs.


BX_TECH_GOD said:
Anyways to the OP try a fresh install of Windows and see what happens. What other programs are you running? Sounds like something is eating up you system resources. Did you run a virus/adware scan?
Click to expand...

I've probably done between 10 and 15 full reinstalls on this hardware so far between the three types of drives and getting the vLite install correct. No virus/adware stuff on it (yet), just vista/sp1/hotfixes and drivers.


BikePilot said:
Also the IDE drive and the 250gb SATA drive aren't terribly fast hard drives. Something like the WD640 would speed things up considerably. I'm not sure that's your problem, but it may be a factor.
Click to expand...

The 250gb drive is the same model I use a pair of in raid 0 for my game rig, solid performers. However its worth a shot using a pair of them in raid 0 here. I'll add that to my list of things to try.
 
Use HDTune to verify the performance of the hard drives / CF array in case there is a performance problem.
I agree with above posters about the speed of the drives used, they wont be very quick.

The new 1TB and 640GB drives that use 320GB platters are really quick, you might get better performance from a single one of those anyway!

For reference, with the Samsung HD103UJ 1TB drive I get
54.5MB/s min
114.7MB/s max
91.6MB/s avg
5.8% CPU
 
Nenu said:
Use HDTune to verify the performance of the hard drives / CF array in case there is a performance problem.
I agree with above posters about the speed of the drives used, they wont be very quick.

The new 1TB and 640GB drives that use 320GB platters are really quick, you might get better performance from a single one of those anyway!

For reference, with the Samsung HD103UJ 1TB drive I get
54.5MB/s min
114.7MB/s max
91.6MB/s avg
5.8% CPU
Click to expand...

ran HDTune and I'm rather disappointed,
19 MB/s min
32.6 MB/s max
27.9 MB/s avg
3ms access time
23.4 MB/s burst
2.1% CPU

So I'll begin another rebuild on a pair of WD1600JS
 
As an update to my big post above,
Bench building the machine did nothing (except draw blood, ouch!)
Different keyboard/mouse- no dice
I'm on to rebuilding on regular hard drives again.
 
How about upgrading the BIOS? Replacing the board with something that is actually decent?
 
Nenu said:
Use HDTune to verify the performance of the hard drives / CF array in case there is a performance problem.
I agree with above posters about the speed of the drives used, they wont be very quick.

The new 1TB and 640GB drives that use 320GB platters are really quick, you might get better performance from a single one of those anyway!

For reference, with the Samsung HD103UJ 1TB drive I get
54.5MB/s min
114.7MB/s max
91.6MB/s avg
5.8% CPU
Click to expand...

I have the Western Digital 640gb drive.. Here are my results, running back to back..

Hope this helps the OP..

HDTUNE1.jpg


HDTUNE2.jpg



EDIT - I defragged my HD and the improvements were minimal..

HDTUNE3.jpg
 
damn 2 minutes...


I had an LG dvdr that did the same thing. It was a great drive, but just delayed the damn boot for some reason.

15 seconds to windows boot logo

freeze for 2 minutes

15 seconds to desktop... Finally got fed up with it and replaced drive, back to normal instantly.
 
As an update, finished the base rebuild on the 160 GB raid 0, HDTune numbers:
71.0MB/s min
115.2MB/s max
95.2MB/s avg
13.2 ms access time
82.8 MB/s burst
6.5% CPU

That was late last night so I didnt time the boot process again. Its rapidly looking like the motherboard is the cause of all these issues. :(
 
Yeah, definitely better!
The burst sucks though and is definitely wrong as your sustained speed exceeds it.
 
Update!

I finally got some time with the holiday to look at this issue some more and it appears to have been a bad BIOS image all along. I attempted to update to the latest 0085 revision using the exe method, but it failed and left the board non-posting. So I followed the recovery method (which was incredibly easy btw, other manufacturers should follow suit) to force an update and once it completed the board was much better behaved! My total boot time is now at ~1 minute!
 
InvaderSevlow said:
I take it you've never owned an Intel board?
Click to expand...

Intel boards are widely known for failure and compatability issues, I think it was [H] who gave a recent Intel mobo review a failure award. intel chipset is good, intel mobo is bad..
 
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