[CDsDontBurn]

So i upgraded my sister's computer the other day (specs below), and i've installed winXP sp2 twice already. Each time, the same symptoms occur. What happens is that whenever I go to open up My Computer, it just hangs there looking for all the devices and whatnot that are there. The only way around it is to plug in a USB flash drive into the computer. Upon doing so, it will display only the flash drive and nothing else. It's not until some time later that it works properly.

Another thing that happened on the previous install of windows was that despite the machine having 1Gb of RAM installed, it only recognized 128Mb. I later cleared the CMOS and it was able to recognize the full 1Gb again. I found that a bit odd.

I checked for a BIOS update on the MoBo, but the one it came with is the most upto date.

The chipset and gfx drivers are the most upto date, nForce 6.86 chipset drivers and forceware 93.71 drivers are installed. Drivers were installed in the following order: chipset > gfx > sound card > network > printer > windows updates.

AMD x2 4200+
1Gb (2x512Mb) Corsair XMS XL
MSI Neo4-F MoBo (MS-7125)
eVGA 7900GS KO
Athena 520w PSU
D-Link Wireless card (DWL-G520)
Sound Blaster Live! sound card
1x WD 36Gb Raptor
1x WD 60Gb 7200RPM 8Mb buffer
Lite-On DVD-RW
Lite-On DVD-ROM
HP PSC 1200 printer

[temeteus82]

this is weird in deed, since i have the same motherboard they your sister has .... ...
only thing that i can imagine is bad ram... but that might not bee the case here .... anyway I gonna keep my eye on this thread...

[CDsDontBurn]

i HIGHLY doubt it's bad RAM. It's the same RAM that i was using in my machine up until i upgraded to the 2Gb OCZ stuff (located to the left). The ram was used in her previous machine, and migrated to her new one.

Anyways.....i just saw another weird issue. Whenever i try to create a shortcut by method of right click > send to > Desktop (create shortcut), it also tends to hang right there. The mouse is still responsive, and i can open up other windows and stuff, but those new windows have limited response because of that.

Maybe i should install winXP x64 on her machine

[PangingJr]

there are several causes for the "Long delay before files appear in My Computer in Windows XP" problems...
each will need different corrective action. give this below link a go, see if you can find a solution for your's

slow response from explorer
>http://groups.google.com/group/micro...rch+this+group

[CDsDontBurn]

Originally Posted by PangingJr

there are several causes for the "Long delay before files appear in My Computer in Windows XP" problems...
each will need different corrective action. give this below link a go, see if you can find a solution for your's

slow response from explorer
>http://groups.google.com/group/micro...rch+this+group

i believe i have found the problem. after reading through some of those posts, some people were reporting that it was related to their printer. Although the printers people had listed were not the same model as my sister's printer, i didn't think that would have been the problem. I then decided to simply turn off the printer to try it anyways. Imediately thereafter, everything worked perfectly fine. That is really odd though. I don't understand why a printer would cause that to happen though

and thanks for the link PangingJr

[PangingJr]

No problem, CDsDontBurn.

[Scytale]

<~ Judas

so the printer is EPP (old parrelle port?)

i've found numerious times that old style printers with newer machines, have a tendancy to seem to poll the printer all the freaking time causing this, OR just work like crap...

USB is generally always better..

but even in the USB case, and it still does this, i would seriously send an email to the manufacturer and let them know something is definitely wrong...

[[hobo]eclipse]

CD's just curious and not to hijack, but did you install the nForce4 IDE and SMBus Drivers, when i got this new board i did on my first install, I installed to the onboard nForce4 SATA and didnt use a driverdisk, after booting in to windows and applying the newest nforce4 drivers,(mind you XP x64) both my SATA drives show up as removable storage? Is this because SATA are hotswapable? It only happened after i applied the nforce4 drivers, On a fresh install i avoided the IDE and SMBus driver from the package and all is well, is this aknown nforce4 issue and does your sisters come up this way after the nVidia driver install? or is this how it should be because SATA are hotswapable, just seems a lil odd to have your bootdrive hotswapable, ive since just installed to a 40 GIG IDE i have and after i get comfortable with this board and hadware and overclockability I'll give the SATA a go again, I had an issue where i was unable to start any D3D app because of "Internal driver error, Device present but not functional" or something to that effect, googling the only thing i seen was recomendation to use DC and reinstall, i did this numerous times and still had the error, thought maybe me playin with my FSB/RAM speed and booting may have done this and wasnt sure if the SATA was corupting things or had when i was playing,ill prolly try to get a 10,000 RPM drive after awhile.

[PangingJr]

where is your DH cookie Judas?
should consider having the user profiles of your browser with you on a USB flash drive or something.

[Scytale]

just lazy panging just lazy here...

[bug77]

Originally Posted by CDsDontBurn

... That is really odd though. I don't understand why a printer would cause that to happen though ...

Flashback to Win95 presentation: "It's gonna see the new printer, it's gonna say 'Hey! I see a new device, it's gonna load in the appropriate drivers... Oooooh! [blue screen of death, chaos]". Remember that?

[CDsDontBurn]

@ Judas: the pritner is a USB printer.

@ hobo: i don't remember what the order of the chipset drivers was when i installed them. I do know though, that i did install the IDE drivers and one other one (not the audio, and not the ethernet). The drive does not show up as a "removable device" under My Computer, but whenever i go to the "safely remove USB hardware" thing in the task manager, the raptor shows up as a removable device.

I've been working on that thing for about 3 days getting all the software (windows updates, anti-spyware, anti-virus, etc.) installed, schooling my sister on hard-drive management, installing games (still need alot more to go still =\), and i'm still not done.

So far though, my sister is very happy . She was playing some Black & White 2 earlier. She was playing the game at 800x600 resolution, and i schooled her on that too, lol. I had her pause the game, and i increased the resolution to 1280x1024 (the max her monitor does) and when the screen refreshed, she was like OMG! lol. her wolf character in the game was all fuzzy and stuff instead of some solid block looking thing.

I'm going to benchmark that thing too. I want to know how it stands . I'd like to OC it some as well, but i'm green when it comes to OCing A64 machines. Maybe i'll just OC the gfx card. Coolbits2 rocks , lol.

I'm just sad now though......her computer is FINALLY better than mine . oh well.....later on this year i'll upgrade my machine. the e6700s should be fairly cheap by then . lol

[Tipstaff]

Funny you should mention this, CDs. I just had the same problem with a clients machine last night. After a good hour of looking into it I had the problem come down to it either being WinFax, the program that was responsible for downloading pictures from her Casio camera (USB driver btw), or... wait for it... the Epson R320 (which is USB driven). Enable the WinFax autostart tool (which starts at Windows bootup), system would lag. Enable the the Casio driver, system would lag (even though the camera wasn't hooked up). Up until yesterday everything had been fine on her system, so it was a hell of a brain teaser. Enable either one, and the system would lag just like you described.

Here's the differing kicker: the printer wasn't hooked up. Go figure.

I tried everything, even loaded the updated Epson drivers off their site. Doing so helped, but it would still lag. In the end I had to remove the Casio driver (and install another program to give her the same functionality), and unload the WinFax autostart tool (starting it manually didn't cause the issues). I have a feeling that it wasn't the driver specifically, but rather one of the other tools that gets installed with the printer (with Epson there is about 8 different apps/tools that get loaded). I just didn't have the time to figure out what it was (nor did I have the printer to do a proper reinstall anyways).

Too wierd.

[PangingJr]

below are some checkpoints and some resolution to the problems of the "slow response after clicking on My Computer in Windows XP"


"Could be an issue with a Shell Extension. If the PC is a Stand-Alone, I would probably unbind "File and Printer Sharing Service" from the NIC. Also, untic the "Automatically Search for Network Folders & Printers from the Folder Options, View (TAB)."

"Disconnect all network shares that you can't browse (because they are offline)."


Microsoft KB819017 - Long delay before files appear in My Computer in Windows XP - http://support.microsoft.com/default...b;EN-US;819017
- Stop the Windows Image Acquisition service.
- or, unplug the printer from the USB port, and then restart Windows XP.
if this problem occurs when your system uses USB cable modem
- Unplug all other USB devices when you use your USB cable modem.


Registry edit - Line 157. Prevent Automatic Folder and Icon Refresh - http://www.kellys-korner-xp.com/xp_tweaks.htm

Registry edit - prevents Windows from attempting to locate available file shares and printers by crawling the local network.
go to HKCU/SoftwareMicrosoftWindowsCurrentVersionExplorerAdva nced and set the value data of (dword) value named "NoNetCrawling" to 1.

Q:
A couple of weeks ago I posted a problem that I was having with a slow
response when I selected "My Computer" The problem is still here and I have
done a little more research on it.

Using Windows Task Manager and 'Processes', I turned on viewing I/O Read
Bytes and I/O Write Bytes. Every time that I select 'My Computer',
Explorer.EXE reads about 600 MBs. On a second computer, Explorer only reads
about 20 KBs. This is a huge difference and is obviously the cause of the
slow response. The I/O Write Bytes seems normal, about the same on both
computers. I restarted the computer about 10-15 minutes ago and
Explorer.EXE has already read over 5GBs, which is far, far more than any
other process.


Everything else on the Task Manager looks normal. Page File usage stays
flat during this time and as you would expect, CPU Usage spikes.


Does anyone have any idea what would cause this and how I could fix it? I
don't particularly want to do a re-install of Windows, but it looks as if
that might be the only cure. I am using XP Pro on a fairly new Dell
computer. I have had two disk failures and a memory chip failure in about 2
months, so the system is not what I would consider the best. They replaced
the entire box after the second disk failure and I just had the memory chip
replaced last Friday.

A:
Try Filemon.Exe from SysInternals. By watching disk activities you
may be able to determine what it is that Explorer is doing. Also from
SysInternals get a copy of Process Explorer and check the "Handles"
column count for the Explorer process.

report back by user...

That did it!!!!. Very good tools. The NTFILMON program pointed out a
definite problem with Nero! I uninstalled all segments of the program and
now My Computer response is immediate. I am not familiar with all that I
was seeing, since my debugging background is primarily in mainframes, but it
was easy to see that Nero was causing some type of problem. I will
re-install and see what happens.

report back by user...

It seems as if NeroMix is the culprit. I am not sure exactly what the
program does, but I just thought it was one of the modules that was needed.
When I uninstalled it, the Explorer worked fine. All I have installed is
the basic Nero6008 module and it does everything that I need.

Process Monitor (combines the features of two legacy Sysinternals utilities, Filemon and Regmon) - http://www.microsoft.com/technet/sys...ssmonitor.mspx

Process Explorer for Windows - http://www.microsoft.com/technet/sys...sExplorer.mspx

[temeteus82]

@hobo: It's because the SATA drives are hot swappable. I have 2 SATAII drives and both of them can be removed on fly...

[PangingJr]

Originally Posted by [hobo]eclipse

... my SATA drives show up as removable storage? Is this because SATA are hotswapable?

From ASUS FAQS at http://support.asus.com/faq/faq.aspx?SLanguage=en-us

Q:
Why is there a "safely remove hardware" icon at right-hand side of taskbar after I installed nForce Chipset Driver in Windows2000/XP? My hard disk is ST380013AS.

A:
Because Nvidia nForce4 SLI chipset can support SATA 2.0 which means that A8N-SLI Series also support Hot-Plug. If your SATA Hard disk do support Hot-Plug, you can Hot-Plug your hard disk like a usb storage device. But only port SATA1/2/3/4 will support this feature.

note-- this part of the message "But only port SATA1/2/3/4 will support this feature." may not exactly apply to your motherboard, check the motherboard manual for the SATA port number that can be used with the Hot-Plug feature,
some of BIOS settings 'may' also be required for this to be fully activated.

[Tipstaff]

Just wanted to clarify something: This isn't indicative of all SATA supported chipsets, and there are necessary settings and procedures to be made before hand for some boards to support hot swapping.

For instance, with the nForce chipset the SATAIDE driver needs to be installed for hot swap support to be active, however if don't install it, you don't get it. Word of warning though, changing drivers, or updating drivers already installed can sometimes have negative effects, specificially, I've seen hot swap support get seriously screwed up after someone had updated the nVidia SATAIDE driver. Wasn't pretty.

With Intel chipsets you need to have either AHCI or RAID (which includes AHCI support) selected within the bios to have access to hot swap support. Setting the SATA controller to PATA, Legacy, or IDE will not actiave AHCI. Also, you need to install the proper controller driver (ICH driver) during the installation of the operating system via the F6 floppy routine (that being the AHCI or RAID driver for the supported controller).

Oh, last thing: for obvious reasons, boot drive = not hot swappable.

[CDsDontBurn]

Originally Posted by Tipstaff

Just wanted to clarify something: This isn't indicative of all SATA supported chipsets, and there are necessary settings and procedures to be made before hand for some boards to support hot swapping.

For instance, with the nForce chipset the SATAIDE driver needs to be installed for hot swap support to be active, however if don't install it, you don't get it. Word of warning though, changing drivers, or updating drivers already installed can sometimes have negative effects, specificially, I've seen hot swap support get seriously screwed up after someone had updated the nVidia SATAIDE driver. Wasn't pretty.

With Intel chipsets you need to have either AHCI or RAID (which includes AHCI support) selected within the bios to have access to hot swap support. Setting the SATA controller to PATA, Legacy, or IDE will not actiave AHCI. Also, you need to install the proper controller driver (ICH driver) during the installation of the operating system via the F6 floppy routine (that being the AHCI or RAID driver for the supported controller).

Oh, last thing: for obvious reasons, boot drive = not hot swappable.

in the BIOS of an A64 board, what would be the setting of disable/enable the hotswap feature of the MoBo? I'd rather have that feature disabled just in case my sister does something she's not supposed to...

i'm the computer brain in my whole family, i want to have this work cut as much as possible at home

[Tipstaff]

Originally Posted by CDsDontBurn

in the BIOS of an A64 board, what would be the setting of disable/enable the hotswap feature of the MoBo? I'd rather have that feature disabled just in case my sister does something she's not supposed to...

i'm the computer brain in my whole family, i want to have this work cut as much as possible at home

It's been a while since I fooled around with it, but I don't recall there being one. Most of the NF boards I've used all had RAID support (like the A8N-SLI), and every time I've used those boards I've eventually setup RAID on them. I do remember going through it a couple times where I didn't have it setup as RAID, and both times I had access to hot swapping only after I installed the SATAIDE driver. However, I only actually tried hot swapping drives when it was setup in RAID.

Unfortunately I don't readily sell or use NF boards, so my knowledge in them is pretty limited (I sell Intel boards for the most part). I'm sure someone will eventually correct me on this.

In any case, no matter what you won't be able to hot swap the boot drive. The same should go for hot swapping the drive that has an active OS on it (such as if you were dual booting OS, and you had the active OS installed on a 2nd hard drive), although I've yet to try actually doing that to be sure on it (my brains actually work enough to keep me from trying something so stupid ).

[PangingJr]

Originally Posted by Tipstaff

Just wanted to clarify something: This isn't indicative of all SATA supported chipsets, and there are necessary settings and procedures to be made before hand for some boards to support hot swapping.

For instance, with the nForce chipset the SATAIDE driver needs to be installed for hot swap support to be active, however if don't install it, you don't get it. Word of warning though, changing drivers, or updating drivers already installed can sometimes have negative effects, specificially, I've seen hot swap support get seriously screwed up after someone had updated the nVidia SATAIDE driver. Wasn't pretty.

With Intel chipsets you need to have either AHCI or RAID (which includes AHCI support) selected within the bios to have access to hot swap support. Setting the SATA controller to PATA, Legacy, or IDE will not actiave AHCI. Also, you need to install the proper controller driver (ICH driver) during the installation of the operating system via the F6 floppy routine (that being the AHCI or RAID driver for the supported controller).

Oh, last thing: for obvious reasons, boot drive = not hot swappable.

btw, my message above was about the "nForce4 SLI chipset" based motherboard, i think i saw [hobo]eclipse's motherboard is using it.

but since Intel chipset's based motherboard has been brought up, Tipstaff, do you have the "safely remove hardware" icon on your taskbar? if so, i mean i think you also use Intel chipset's based motherboard, then may be you can help me, am i missing something? the icon has never showed up on my system, i do use Intel chipset's based motherboard that are also support this feature, BIOS has been setup correctly, hard drives and other necessary hardwares do supports this feature?

[Tipstaff]

Originally Posted by PangingJr

but since Intel chipset's based motherboard has been brought up, Tipstaff, do you have the "safely remove hardware" icon on your taskbar? if so, i mean i think you also use Intel chipset's based motherboard, then may be you can help me, am i missing something? the icon has never showed up on my system, i do use Intel chipset's based motherboard that are also support this feature, BIOS has been setup correctly, hard drives and other necessary hardwares do supports this feature?

Here's where it gets interesting, Panging.

For some strange reason the "Safely Remove Hardware" icon may not show up at all. From what I've found it all depends on how you installed the system. More specifically, it all depends on when you installed the Intel Matrix Storage Manager, and when you installed all subsequent hard drives... that being before or after the installation of the IMSM. With RAID, this has never been a problem, it works, but with AHCI I've found that it's best to install the system (and obviously installing the AHCI controller via the F6 floppy install), install all necessary motherboard drivers (ie. chipset), and then install the Intel Matrix Storage Manager. What will happen "sometimes" when you add a SATA hard drive after that is that the "Safely Remove Hardware" icon will show up, but again, not always. I do find, however, that other controllers, such as the JMicron (which Asus uses for their eSATA supported boards), or Silican Image ones (which you find on most 975 boards that have a second SATA controller) tend to work just fine, but Intels ICH one when set to AHCI just seems to be.. picky.

Of note, an Intel tech once mentioned that you can still hot swap the drive simply by going into Device Manager, select the drive you want to hot swap, and remove/disable it. Until the Intel tech mentioned it I thought this was only possible with the Silicon Image controller, but the guy swore it'd work just fine. I've yet to take them up on that... advice.

In any case, most times I just don't even bother trying to figure it out, and instead use a program called HotSwap!. Works pretty well actually. Originally designed for the Silicon Image controller this little beauty lets you control the hot plugging/swapping of just about anything, and it just happens to work with the Intel ICH when run in AHCI or RAID mode.

[PangingJr]

okay thanks, Tipstaff.
even though i used to wonder about this when i first got things set up on Intel 965 chipset based motherboards, i have not tried researching about this yet. until now, after reading your messages above i just had a quick think about this again, also about my next motherboards and how they will be setting up, as of now i use JMicron's for external SATA.
now this just brought up something to me right away, well i'm not quite sure just yet, but i think because of all my drives are containing some system files, and this is unlikely to be allowed hotswapping by either Intel software or Windows or both. just thought about this now, so i need to check this out later, may be this have to be in a new system setup even later since i have many things going on in the existing system and this will take a lot of time for reconfiguring them.

[[hobo]eclipse]

thnks alot for the advice guys, odd thing is at the time the 320 gig sata2 i have was the only SATA drive, let alone SATA2 drive i had hooked up and after nForce4 installed in windows i got the removable storage icon with it in there, is this because i didnt use a driver disk on intstallation?. Also about installation, i didnt use a driver disk, and i dont seem to see an area in the newest nforce4 file extraction thats simply named nforce4 driver disk, with out the proper SATA driver installed from a disk on a fresh windows install does this make it run in a type IDE emulatuon mode? Can any point out which files from the nForce4 i would use on a fresh install.



This is what i have in the nVidia chipset extraction, can i make a driver disk from any of this for during windows XP x64 installation to install nForce4 SATA3.0?

[Tipstaff]

I've only installed x64 once on an nForce board, and I tell you.. what a pain in the ass that was. More times than not I got one blue screen o'death after another. After some searching I found a post by someone on Planet64 that detailed a hassle free way to install the driver properly.

You can read that post HERE on Planet64. Also on the same site under their Downloads section (under Storage), you will find the x64 F6 RAID floppy driver. Just extract it, and copy all the files over to a floppy. You will need to register with them to be able to access the downloads though, but it's worth it.

[drivehard454]

deleted

[drivehard454]

I too have the same problem with windows slow response when clicking "my computer". I just installed this windows xp pro and the SP2. I have a slow response opening up explorer after restarting, and a few other times there is a slow response when accessing certain things. I am not very advanced into computer tech, but do like to try to figure things out myself or with help.
I tried to follow along with all the information in this thread. I unhooked both printers and restarted. The same problem occurs. I haven't installed the software yet for them, so it is still detecting printers at start-up.
I am totally lost with panging jr's #14 post. Is there a simpler explaination on what I can do to fix this problem?
I also get a "safely remove hardware on a USB mass storage device-drive H. I don't know what that even is from. I dont have a drive H.
Is this something I am going to be able to fix myself? Thanks for any help, sorry if I jumped your thread, I just didn't want to start another on the same topic.

[PangingJr]

see if i can help you... what part of messages in my post you mention that you are totally lost?

[drivehard454]

I tried disconnecting both of my printers. It was mentioned that it is caused by USB coonections. I have two printers and my mouse is USB. I haven't tried a different mouse with the other "round" type connection. My printers have not been "installed" yet, so each time I start up it says "windows detected printers". So I thought that may have had something to do with it.

[drivehard454]

I tried disconnecting both of my printers. It was mentioned that it is caused by USB coonections. I have two printers and my mouse is USB. I haven't tried a different mouse with the other "round" type connection. My printers have not been "installed" yet, so each time I start up it says "windows detected printers". So I thought that may have had something to do with it.
I tried

[drivehard454]

That's odd, I tried hitting "tab" and it posted what I was typing?

Anyways, I tried the "registry edit line 157", ran the download, and restarted, I have the same problem. I am trying to follow along with the rest of things that were posted, but am not sure how to go about it.

I looked for the mentioned FiLEMON.EXE that is where I am lost. I do not know what needs to be done there. The quote that is in your post states that it worked. It mentions something with Nero. I also have Nero installed However I am having problems with it. When I start it, it locks up.

I may have a lot of things wrong, as I had a previous problem with my other windows that was installed. I ran driver cleaner and deleted the wrong stuff and lost the drivers. The computer wouldn't load windows anymore and I had to install another version on a different hard drive. After that, I have been accessing the old hard drive, trying to revive my old programs, many of which I don't have discs for to reload.

Anyhow, thats the story, I am just trying to get my system back up to normal. Problem is, I have to be careful now, because my wife needs to use this computer for a while for her job.