Weird performance problems

[badgers]

Hi, I'm hoping one of you knowledgable people can help me out

I recently got a new hard disk and case for my system, so I transplanted the parts out of the old chassis and into the new. I reinstalled Win XP Pro and all my software on the new hard disk, but performance has been noticeably slower than it was before, to quite a major degree.
Games are unplayable, programs take a long time to load, as do videos and music files, and menus are really slow to appear, even for Windows. Even program windows noticeably jerk and lag as they're minimized and maximized. I'm not sure exactly where the problem is so I'm hoping someone can give some pointers in the right direction?

Specs before:
AMD A64 3200+
MSI K8T Neo mobo
1GB DDR400 Crucial RAM (standard value stuff)
Hercules 9800XT
2x Samsung Spinpoint P80 SATA drives in RAID 0
NEC DVD-RW
Plextor CD-RW
Dell 2005FPW monitor
Win XP Home

Specs now:
Exactly the same as above, except...
Western Digital Raptor 74GB (primary drive)
Win XP Pro
Samsung drives now running in normal configuration, one on the same controller as the Raptor (Promise) and the other on its own on the additional VIA controller.



Erm...help?!

[Rave]

Check the drives are in DMA mode. If they're not, you can often get them back in again by uninstalling the drivers from your system and then letting windows re-detect them.

Rich :¬)

[badgers]

There's no option to view or change DMA settings. It's certainly enabled on the standard IDE controllers.

[Ferral]

On XP to check the DMA settings on the drive right click on My Computer on the Desktop and select Properties and left click.

Click Hardware Tab

Click Device Manager

Click + beside ATA / ATAPI Controller

Right click on Primary IDE Channel and select properties

Click Advanced settings and in there is the DMA / PIO settings for Windows

Repeat for Secondary IDE Channel

[Rave]

What he said. I should have gone into a bit more detail myself, sorry.

[Ferral]

Another must is install the latest chipset drivers for the motherboard, if they arnt you can get a major performance drop in everything

[badgers]

On XP to check the DMA settings on the drive right click on My Computer on the Desktop and select Properties and left click.

Click Hardware Tab

Click Device Manager

Click + beside ATA / ATAPI Controller

Right click on Primary IDE Channel and select properties

Click Advanced settings and in there is the DMA / PIO settings for Windows

Repeat for Secondary IDE Channel

Yeah, already done that. I've got Primary and Secondary IDE Channels both set to DMA, they were already like that. I've also got VIA Bus Master IDE Controller, which doesn't have the Advanced tab. I'm assuming that's something it installs so Windows can recognise SATA drives.

[autopilot]

Did you install your motherboard drivers? Having DMA is not going to criple your system as much as that.

[badgers]

Fixed it. Got pissed off when, after rebooting, all my optical drives disappeared. Bastard computer is lucky the police confiscated my collection of rocket launchers.
Reinstalled Windows, updated all my drivers using MSI Live Update and now it's running sweet. I think SP2 might have had something to do with it. No way in hell am I installing that piece of **** again.
Effin' MS. Suse Linux, here I come.