topic Re: very slow s3xp in PCs & Accessories

very slow s3xp

martynrb — Sun, 04 Feb 2007 06:29:03 GMT

I have a sudden problem with my S3XP.
It is super slow starting up, the Windows XP splash screen takes an age to disappear and get to logon screen, and even the startup music is slow and stuttering.
When booted up the machine is still slow. I've checked the task manager but nothing there seems to be running in background.
The machine has just been restored using restore partition, and WinXP is fully patched with all latest updates. McAfee AntiVirus and firewall are installed.
I don't think that installed programs/McAfee are the problem because of the splash screen slowness before anything even gets chance to load, and I suspect latest windows updates have done something.......
I have used the Tune-Up utility to clean and defrag registry etc but this made zero difference.
Any thoughts? I'm away from home and can't use the restore options now, so I gotta fix this!!!
Martyn.

Re: very slow s3xp

ddf — Sun, 11 Feb 2007 08:51:39 GMT

Hello Martynrb,

this sounds exactly like a problem i had with my Vaio, which i though was related to sound card (look at the thread "Realtek sound card problem). After long discussion and magnificient help from some experts we found a fix and since then my Vaio is starting up like a charm and works much faster (or at least, as it is designed for!).

Could you have a look in your Device Manager, (Control Panel -> System -> Hardware -> Device Manager), open the "IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers" sublist, then look for the properties of your Primary IDE Channel (eventually also Secondary).

In the "advanced settings" flick, you should see something like "Transfer Mode = DMA if available" and "Current transfer mode = Ultra DMA mode 5" or other number.

When i did this check, i had "PIO only" as transfer mode, which means all data transfer from for instance hard disk to RAM was buffered by CPU (slow) instead of using Direct Memory Access (fast).
So i simply un-installed the drivers of the IDE channels, and booted up the laptop: it worked immediately.

I hope it works for you also!

cheers,
david

Re: very slow s3xp

martynrb — Sun, 11 Feb 2007 09:51:18 GMT

Hi ddf.
Many thanks for your advice, I will store the info away for future reference.
I lost patience with my S3XP and did a factory restore, fearing either the HDD or RAM had failed in some way.
Restore went fine and it's now running speedily, the way it should.
But........that now leaves me with 128Mb XP updates to get over a 28k modem........

Re: very slow s3xp

Luftikus — Tue, 27 Mar 2007 13:23:07 GMT

Hello David,

thanks !!! for your hints on the DMA-Settings, which I found after 12 hours of defrags, bios-update and uninstalling (startup-)software on a VGN-FS485B.

See you,

Juergen