[RESOLVED] Laggy PC

[Teseng]

I've had a problem with this PC for some time, I've tried different motherboard, cpu, ram, everything but harddrive(which very well may be the problem) It started when i installed my new 250gb SATA II drive, brand new. Launching almost any program, and at random intervals, my entire machine goes into slow-mo mode. Music plays much slower, and the mouse freezes for 1 second, every 3 seconds or so. The new dual-core cpu i got helped it alot, but it still does it sometimes, the only error i can find is this.

An error was detected on device \Device\Harddisk0\D during a paging operation.
and
The device, \Device\Ide\IdePort2, did not respond within the timeout period.

2 different errors in event viewer, but they come in clusters of 3
1, then the other, then the first one again.

The thing is, D: is a DVD Drive, which has no disk in it, so it shouldnt be DOING anything.

Reformatted, tried new cables, and even a new motherboard. What else is there to do. My HD is brand new, dont want to send her back so soon.

[alex_read]

Slow downs of apps and the entire OS are common to CMOS batteries running low on the motherboard (that little round circular battery there).

Harddisk0 - usually with OS lower level apps and BIOS's and whatnot, and in Windows too, you have the disk referenced similar to ConnectorControllerID\DriveID\PartitionID\ It certainly looks like it's looking at HDD ID 0 there. Could it be there's a hidden manufacturer system partition on that disk? I'd be tempted to run a full scandisk and defrag on the drive if I had those myself.

[Hack]

You said the harddrive is brand new.

What about the rest of the components? How old are they?

[Teseng]

Actually every part in my PC is new come to think of it, power supply i only a few months old, motherboard like a month, cables same age as motherboard, ram the same as well. Only old parts i have are keyboard, speakers, and monitor.

Does it matter that im using a power adapter for my HD? (Molex to SATA) and for my motherboard (20 to 24 pin) Its a 500 watt power supply so it shouldnt be straining with basic stuff.

As for the battery, its the same new one that came with my board, think it could have been sent low? It hasnt had any cmos problems to my knowledge.

[CodedFire]

have you an older hard drive to try?

[Teseng]

I do somewhere, but it overheats rather fast, gets to about 130 Fahrenheit just getting to windows, explains why i got a new one

The only problem with that, is that its so hard to reproduce. It happens enough so it pisses me off, but its always under different conditions, PC can be idle, or working on something to its fullest extent, and i cant find ANY common points each time it does it, EXCEPT that accord to process explorer, 100% CPU is being used up by "Hardware Interrupts" but task manager shows CPU only running at around 10%.

[Lord Orwell]

wow hardware interrupts. that is extremely vague. But oddly enough it could be caused by one of your old pieces of equipment. Both the keyboard and monitor use hardware interrupts. I really don't think it's the monitor though since they normally only trigger interrupts during plugging them in or poweron/off. You could always try a different one. However there's something i want you to do first: change your power settings in windows to "desktop" with nothing ever powering down. It sounds like a wait period for the new hard drive to spin up. If you have it powering down automatically when idle it won't actually spin up again until you try to access it.

[drag0n_45]

I've seen hard drive failures cause the machines to slow down the extent you've described.
I don't think it's the power adapter or you'd be seeing that slowdown all the time, or at the very least when the machine is NOT idle, which is the opposite of what you describe.
If you have the money, I'd try another hard drive (completely different drive if possible, but keep it sata so that we are using the same hard drive controller) and hold on to this one. If the problem is duplicated in the other hard drive, then you know the problem isn't with the drive and you can send it back. If the problem isn't duplicated with the new hard drive, you'll have to return the one you don't want to return.

[Teseng]

Solved!

I used XXClone to copy every setting/etc from my SATA drive, onto an IDE drive. Booted from it, which took about a whole minute LESS than usual, and everything is speedy, can actually tell i have my Core 2 Duo now. I still have almost all of the 5 year warranty on this SATA drive, so i guess i'll send it back and try a new one. Pretty sure its the drive, tried it in a completely different box, with different sata drivers/ports/cables, and it caused the exact same slowdowns. I guess i should have known it was bad when the day i got it, it started having massive bad blocks in event viewer.

Thanks everyone!