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FAT32 and DVDr drives
Tindo@heart - Sep 8, 2003

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  Tindo@heart Sep 8, 2003
My friend has a 667Mhz P3, 64MB Memory, and a 20gig harddrive.

It also has only 1 5.25 bay, and he wanted a CD-burner. . . and eventually a DVD burner.

I told him since he has only 1 bay, that he should only get a good DVD burner.

He got a TDK indiDVD drive, and it seems like a great drive. I have the TDK Velocd CDRW and love it. My CDRW has burnt over 500+ CD and not 1 of those were ever the slightest bit bad. It's great. . . :blah

After he got the drive and copied a few DVDs his computer is awfully slow. It's slow to boot, reboot, open an explorer window, and everything.

I realize he has only 64MB, and he is upgrading that soon. However, this problem has nothing to do with the RAM. I'm sure it's something else. I'm suspecting the FAT32 filesystem.

He is running a Win98SE install 2 months fresh. I've checked for viruses with an updated NortonAV2k3, and spyware with "search and destory" . . but it found nothing.

Something weird I found was the sub-directories. I found 21 subdirectories copied into itself. :huh For example:

C:/downloads/downloads/downloads/downloads/downloads/downloads X15

.. and the "Send to" menu was screwed. When I went to use the "Send to" it said "Send to>Send to"

I checked out the "C:\Windows\sendto" and it seemed fine.

after a reboot this was corrected.

I ran Scandisk, then Defrag, and it's still slow. I've tweaked the "disk cache" and cleared temp files.

Here is what I think now:

That the FAT32 filesystem is funky after copying >2gig files from the DVD drive.

I suggest to my friend to get more memory and install Win2kpro. I'm sure that will fix his current problem.

However, does anybody have any clue why 98SE has crapped out so much. I have seen similar computers without DVDrs that run 98SE flashy and quick for months.

 Scared0o0Rabbit Sep 8, 2003
I'd say make sure it's not leaving temp files all over the place. Also, I'd check the defrag on it. When copying things and only having 1 bay they get copied to the hdd first (or all the time in the case of dvd's cause those don't really work on the fly). All that copying to and from the hdd can really frag the hell out of your pc's hdd.

 Tindo@heart Sep 8, 2003
Currently he is using "DVD X copy Xpress" and has a designated temp folder "C:\DVDTEMP"

I have DELTREE the folder and recreated to flush any hidden contents, and it's still slow.

Should I make a separate partition for the copy process?

and how big?

I have ran degrag and it doesn't help this problem. I have even used WindowsME "more efficient" defrag.

I suppose I can try a more powerful defrag utitlity? and perhaps partition magic to create a separate tempfile partition.

 Scared0o0Rabbit Sep 8, 2003
alternately you could get him to install an operating system that isn't horribly inneficient and useless. Perhaps put 256 MB of ram in there (should cost less than $40 for pc133, which I'm guessing it uses either that or pc100), and slap either 2k pro or xp pro on there. You may find that between using an OS that isn't known to run horribly, (some might argue xp shares many of it's problems), more ram, and ntfs, it may run faster.

 Tindo@heart Sep 8, 2003
It's not horribly inneficient and usless . . . the filesystem might be for his setup though.

I'm positive that what you mention will solve all of his problems.

. .

however, I'm curious of what caused it to begin with?

Is it really the filesystem? and fragmentation?

With nothing running it takes 20 seconds to open an Explorer window.

I've ran 98SE on 133Mhz and it's 3 times as faster than his 667Mhz.

 racketboy Sep 8, 2003
it's probably only a 5200RPM drive too

 antime Sep 8, 2003
If your friend's system is broken like you described it's pretty safe to say the problem isn't disk fragmentation.

 Scared0o0Rabbit Sep 8, 2003
Windows ME = Broken

 Tindo@heart Sep 8, 2003
I never said anything is broken. Everything runs fine except the speed. It even views DVDs fine with a software decoder, and his cable modem still hits 1.5MBs. Everything runs fine except programs that use the harddrive.

It runs 98SE, not ME. I only used WinME's defrag because it was easily available at the time, and does a quicker job than previous Windows defrag. . . . but it was slow before all of this.

BTW, WinME is the most efficient 9x Windows that MS has made. The superior memory management alone wins my opinion for FAT32 based systems. .(this coming from someone that ran ME on a 486 for 2years) . . but that's all opinion and irreverent to the topic.

Can anyone give a good guess on what would cause a sudden slow down on Win98SE? . . . If it's not fragmention or the filesystem, then what is it? Any guesses on what it could be instead of what it is not?

 Scared0o0Rabbit Sep 8, 2003
XP takes my vote as being the best OS to run on fat32 *shrug* but that just might be me. ^_^

 mtxblau Sep 8, 2003
I had this problem too. The following may or may not be helpful - there IS a registry tweak for this that did correct the problem. However, I don't have it right now. As soon as I find it I will post it.

EDIT:

Here's something to try before trying anything else:

Go to Dos, and at the prompt type:

scanreg /fix

And that should fix the problem. Otherwise try some of these links.

That registry edit, made mention here, halfway through the thread:

http://beta.experts-exchange.com/Operating...Q_207...

Also a number of helpful speed increase ideas

Another set of tweaks that may help:

http://www.bootdisk.com/topten.htm...

The last one is a bit extreme, but the main suggestion than 99% of the time that fixes this issue is deleting the desktop.ini file in 'My Documents'. The icon changes to a boring plain file folder, but almost always fixes the problem.

Without further ado, if all else fails:

http://the-it-mercenary.com/forums/Help/po...posts...

Hope something in all this helps. knows I've spent way too much time trying to get win98 running properly (in the meantime Microsoft released 2 more iterations of the same OS and 2 completely different OSes, going on a third).

 Tindo@heart Sep 8, 2003
Scared0o0Rabbit, if I run XP I prefer it to use NTFS.

MTXBlau, thanks alot! I can't wait to try some of this out, and I'll be sure to let you know how it goes.

 gameboy900 Sep 9, 2003
And of course nobody mentioned one of the most common reasons for stupid slow drive access. DMA. Make sure that the DVD burner has DMA turned on for it. (You can find it in one of the tabs for the drive in the hardware list) Also make sure you DO NOT have the hard drive and burner on the same EIDE cable. Put the hard drive on the primary and burner on secondary.

 Tindo@heart Sep 9, 2003
both drives are master and have their own IDE channel, with the harddrive on the primary. the case too small for any extra drives.

DMA has been enabled on both since day 1. However, I'll check that it hasn't accidently been disabled.

 Alexvrb Sep 9, 2003

  
	
	

		
		

			Originally posted by Tindo@heart@Sep 9, 2003 @ 04:56 AM



 Scared0o0Rabbit, if I run XP I prefer it to use NTFS.


Agreed. What's the point in using XP and using an older filesystem? Unless for some reason you HAD to. Also, I've found my system to be much faster and more responsive with WinME than with XP, and it turns out better results in games. That's not saying I won't be forced to update, and that's not saying 2k/XP don't have their advantages. But right now 9x works better for me. I hear Longhorn was pushed back, but that will probably be retarded anyway. They talk about revolutionary, and I can't help but think that they are going to force me to relearn everything again...

 Scared0o0Rabbit Sep 9, 2003
With the right tweaks, xp blows me out of the water. Also, with the suggestion of having your PF on a different physical disc and have it be the first thing on the disc. It's suggested also that you make it have it's own partition (small) and actually use fat16 on it. Apparently fat16 is much faster on loading even if it's incredibly useless for anything else these days. (not that you'd take either of those suggestions unless you were doing a clean install).

 Tindo@heart Sep 9, 2003

  
	
	

		
		

			Originally posted by Alexvrb+Sep 9, 2003 @ 02:02 AM-->
QUOTE(Alexvrb @ Sep 9, 2003 @ 02:02 AM)