New motherboard/cpu/ram issues

[merak69]

(I've Posted this in the ECS section also)

I just bought brand new RC410L/800-M 2.0 board with a Celeron D 3.06ghz (346 Model) and a new stick of DDR2 ram (512mb, pc4200). I got the board and CPU from Microcenter and the ram from Best Buy.

I installed the board in an existing case that had an existing 30gb IDE (ATA100) hard drive.
My problem is this: I installed Windows XP Pro from scratch (formatted the hard drive) and it took 1 1/2 hours to just install. I chose to do a Quick NTFS format, and it took 5 minutes alone.

I've never seen a computer go so slow. Once it was installed, everything in windows xp is very very slow.

WTH is wrong here?


My old P4 1.7ghz CPU/Board (with 512mb of ram) that was in this case before only took 25 minutes to install windows xp and was extremely fast. I'd think 3.06ghz processor, celeron or not, would be quite a bit faster.

[charleski]

Sounds like your hard drive. Check that it's not running in PIO mode, then do a thorough error scan on it.

[merak69]

Sounds like your hard drive. Check that it's not running in PIO mode, then do a thorough error scan on it.

I loaded up Everest Ultimate Edition... It said the current mode is UDMA5 (UATA 100).
I've run Spinrite on the drive and nothing bad was found. I can take the same drive in another computer and it works perfectly.

[IAmATeaf]

Try changing out the IDE cable.

[merak69]

Try changing out the IDE cable.

did that too... sorry, forgot to mention that

[merak69]

Ok, so I called Microcenter tech support (since its free).

What the guy told me I don't believe. He said that DDR2 is designed to run best in pairs, and that while you can run a lone stick (like i'm doing) it'll bog the system down.

Sounds like hes just making stuff up now. Anyone got any comments on this?

[charleski]

He said that DDR2 is designed to run best in pairs, and that while you can run a lone stick (like i'm doing) it'll bog the system down.

He would be right if you had a different board. Intel DDR2 chipsets use dual-channel technology. But, I just looked up your board and it uses an ATI RC410L and lists 'single-channel DDR2 memory architecture' on its specs, so running one stick should be fine.

I still think it sounds like sonething's wrong with your hard disk interface. Try hdtach and see what speeds it's reporting.

[merak69]

I fixed it... It seems both of the Quantum hard drives I was using were the issue. I put in a 3rd hard drive of a different brand (seagate I believe) and all is perfect

I still think it sounds like sonething's wrong with your hard disk interface. Try hdtach and see what speeds it's reporting.

The new drive's speeds are 30mb/sec... I'll have to put back in one of the Quantum drives and see what it does.