Chaintech 7Nil1 System Seems Slow

[sherry]

In order to assure myself some " computer seat time" during the summer with three teenage girls in the house, I built myself a small, inexpensive personal computer using bits and pieces of things I already had or could get at a bargain. This computer is used only for surfing the net, e-mail, some photo editing, just the usual putzy mom things. I don't game, although my husband has played NASCAR THUNDER 2004 on this computer and loves it!)

Details:

Chaintech 7NIL1 Socket A Motherboard with Nvidia Nforce 2 Ultra 400 chipset
Athlon XP 3200+
1 gig of Mushkin DDR3200 Ram
80 G Western Digital Caviar SE WD800JB
Lite-On Dual Layer DVD SOHW-1673S
Asus 256mb Radeon 9250 Video Card
Iomega 250 Zip Drive
D-Link DWL G520 Wireless Adaptor
Soundblaster LIVE! 24 bit Audio Card because the MOBO audio codec crapped out already
350 watt power supply

The WD hard drive is by itself on IDE 1, with DVD (master) and the Zip Drive (Slave) being on the other.

While this computer was never meant to set the world on fire for speed and whatnot, but it really seems sort of slow sometimes for the relatively decent components that it DOES have. The hard drive is very quiet, but it seems like it has to labor somewhat and takes awhile to boot up and load things, and it takes forever for things to load off of the Zip Drive. (The ZIP almost acts like it locks up). I have had no error messages, no funny noises coming from the hard drive, and I spent the day downloading and listening to music yesterday with absolutely no negative issues whatsoever. It just seems sort of... I dunno... slower than I thought it would be.

I have been through the BIOS numerous times to see if I was missing something, but I haven't done anything that has helped. I have also tried several different IDE cables from flat ribbon to round with the same results. It's an older motherboard I know, so maybe it's just going to be a little slower than I am used to? (Our other two computers are P4 3.0 Northwood)

Any ideas appreciated.

 

[Cromewell]

How slow is it actually? (ie. how long does it take to boot, alot of times if you watch it it seems like it takes longer)

Everything you've got in it is at least reasonably fast, ZIP drives are faster than floppies but they aren't exactly speed demons.

 

[sherry]

I think I may have solved the problem, but I will post it here anyway in case it might help someone else.

My computer as detailed above was taking 55 seconds to 1 full minute to boot up from the time I pressed on the power button until I got to the desktop.

My one year old Dell took 25 seconds. This machine has a 2.8 Pentium 4 533fsb with 1 gig of DDR 2700 memory.

My daughter's T2482 e-machine takes 40 seconds. It has an Athlon XP 2400+ 266fsb with 1 gig of DDR 2100 memory.

After going through the bios on my computer again with no improvement, I updated the drivers. Updating the IDE/ATAPI drivers dropped the boot time to 30 seconds, which I can live with.

What is considered to be a "normal" boot up time anyway? (Knowing that in all situations of life, there is no such thing as normal!)

 

[Cromewell]

Hard to say. My main system (3GHz P4, 1GB PC3200, 7200RPM HDD) usually takes somewhere between 30-45 seconds to go from POST to windows desktop, yet my other system with a 2GHz P4 with 512 MB PC2100 RAM and 7200RPM HDD takes about 25 seconds .

 

[sherry]

So I'm right within range.

I am satisfied that the missing driver is what was causing the problems. I have been playing around with the ZIP drive and it's now as fast as all the others we have, and it loads things right up.

What's odd is that before I downloaded the driver, both the HD and the ZIP were listed in my Device Manager as SCSI devices. Now they are not.

I learn something new every day. I guess that's a good thing.

 

[Praetor]

alot of times if you watch it it seems like it takes longer)

good god i hate the way that happens

what is considered to be a "normal" boot up time anyway ? (knowing that in all situations of life, there is no such thing as normal !)

what you've got there is pretty average

something to doublecheck also is that everything is running in dma mode if possible (rather than pio, see the HDD 101 for a how-to and explainaions). (question 4 of the troubleshooting section)