MSI P35 Performance.

Moving large files renders my computer unuseable. Nothing will respond until the file move has completed, start menu wont respond, apps stall, gmail times out, all until the transfer is complete. I'm talking files in the order of 2 Gb or more.

Defragging is the worst, also backups to USB drive has similar effect. I'm using WIn XP SP3 through a Marvel IDE controller but someone on the MSI forum using two SATA drives on the Intel ICH9 controller notices the same effect when decoding video.

MSI sent me a beta BIOS which I flashed in response to this problem which rendered my machine unbootable (sweating). It turns out I think MSI sent me the wrong BIOS I suspect. I managed to reflash the latest working Bios using the Award emergency procedure (phew) and back up and running.

So hardware gurus what is the cause of this slowdown, the other P35 user is using entirely different hardware except for an MSI P35 board and chipset?

I've no idea what can be causing this. I don't have this problem on an MSI Neo P35 with two SATA drives. (XP64 & Windows 7 64-bit).

That's interesting, that sort of rules out the P35 board although I notice you are using 64 bit OS, could this be a 32 bit XP problem? I'm trying to find out what the other MSI user is using as OS.

I guess that it could be a 32-bit problem. I also have 64-bit Linux installed and, again, have no problems with file copies either within a disk or from one disk to another.

Do you have the same problem when copying files to/from a CD, or to/from a network drive?

BTW, I have the latest generally released BIOS; again I noticed no problems with the previous BIOS. My processor is a Core 2 Duo E6750.

Have not noticed any problems when copying to CD or DVD or writing disks. I run backups over the network can't say I have noticed any slowdown then. I have a core 2 duo E8400, it just seems to be when transferring hdd to hdd or within hdd like when defragging.

When transferring to USB hdd over the network from another computer I am able to do other things and multitask but not when disk to disk on the local machine. Now that I think about it disk to USB disk transfers are unaffected. It certainly is a puzzle, it's as if there is a bottleneck somewhere.

In reply to a post by Banger:

Have not noticed any problems when copying to CD or DVD or writing disks. I run backups over the network can't say I have noticed any slowdown then. I have a core 2 duo E8400, it just seems to be when transferring hdd to hdd or within hdd like when defragging.

When transferring to USB hdd over the network from another computer I am able to do other things and multitask but not when disk to disk on the local machine. Now that I think about it disk to USB disk transfers are unaffected. It certainly is a puzzle, it's as if there is a bottleneck somewhere.

I would try running a memory test utility, and also a HD utility which shows how much processor utilisation is occuring with HDD activity.

I am no expert but it seems a component might have developed a fault somewhere rather than it being an inherent problem with the motherboard. We get a few computers which just slow down abnormally all of a sudden. No idea which component it is which causes it though.

Ok it has just turned me into a liar LOL. I have just transferred a 6.5gb file from one drive to another and was able to do lots of other things. I have a CPU monitor on screen at all times and CPU use was about 4% on both cores. Was able to play music, browse my computer and go through the start menu and start a couple of programs while the transfer was in progress.

The other guy with a P35 is using both XP x64 and XP x86 with Sata disks in AHCI mode with two different drives to me a Samsung and WD. I have a Seagate and a Maxtor. Will try testing in defrag mode again and see if I can reproduce the problem.

Ok have managed to reproduce the problem using mydefrag 4.2.7 while moving the windows 7 rc dvd on disk near the end of the move explorer stopped responding for a short while and I couldnt access the start menu but other programs were still running.

I know mydefrag uses windows sub routines to move files so might be xp related, and as the other guy has tried several decoders but always under a flavour of xp. Wonder if decoders hes using use windows API routines. Will contact the defrag developers forum for his thoughts.

Testing with windows xp defrag was even worse. When moving large files windows explorer locked up for a long time and so did windows defrag. Is this an MS API bug, still trying to get to the bottom of it as it seems to be a software problem as other already running programs didnt hang and kept chugging along but anything associated with windows explorer hung including start menu. Have been able to reproduce this on another xp machine with a different chipset/motherboard. Is this an XP problem?

While googling found this http://support.microsoft.com/kb/822430/en-us which seems a similar problem but fixed in SP2.

Edited by Banger (Wed 06-Jan-10 20:43:48)

Well it's not my day today having a non booting computer this morning due to an incorrect Bios rom and now half my startup items disappeared after using msconfig to disable them.

I foolishly disabled some startup items under one account then re-enabled them under the admin account. Result when logging back on to original account msconfig had lost half of them causing numerous problems. Fortunately I had a backup two days old so restored.

Why did I do this because running defragmenters in safe mode cured the stall/hang problem. So disabling start up items seemed a logical place to start but as you see above it turned into a nightmare. One upside to this is I have managed to reproduce the symptom on entirely different hardware ruling out the MSI board but software configuration is similar so no clues there. Think I'll give it up and just run defraggers overnight when they can use as much resources as they need.