Hard Drive Stuttering

[donka]

Hi All,




I've done a full rebuild of my system (specs below) and the only new component has been to go from an ATI AIW 9800 SE to the Pro model.


All seems set up as before however now I'm getting stuttering issues such as the pointer stuttering across the screen occasionally and also poor audio playback with skipping of music etc. I've identified the cause as hard drive accessing at these times however this was never an issue before. Running an ATI diagnostic tool reports that I have HD issues and I should ensure DMA is enabled however both my hard drives are on my Promise Raid/ATA controller. My normal IDE channels have DMA enabled however the only devices on these channels are my CD ROMs. I have no such option under the ATA133 controller in device manager and so unable to rectify this option at the moment. I did change the BIOS settings to fail safe defaults and then back to Optimized but cannot see any individual settings that may cause this issue. Any ideas??

*****************

Windows XP Pro SP2
AMD Athlon XP 2400+
Gigabyte 7DXR+
1Gb PC2100
Pioneer DVD Rom - IDE0
Plextor CD-RW - IDE1
Maxtor 7200rpm 8MB 120Gb - ATA133 1 (promise controller)
IBM Deskstar 7200rpm 2MB 46Gb - ATA133 2 (promise controller)
ATI All In Wonder 9800 Pro 128mb
Videologic Sonicfury

 

[TheMajor]

is it an old drive?

 

[donka]

The main hard drive (Maxtor) is less than a year old and this has XP installed on one of the partitions. I have streamed music of this and the IBM drive however and both exhibit the same stuttering effects - listening to music is not really possible because of this at the moment whereas it was flawless before. This makes me think it is a setting with the Promise ATA controller that is causing this issue.

 

[TheMajor]

i would put one of my CD-roms on the promise controller and put the HD on ur motherboard, or put both HD's on ur motherboard

 

[donka]

That would work but it wouldn't explain why this set up no longer functions correctly. I'll try a reinstall of the Promise driver and see if that makes any difference. I know the BIOS sees both drives and DMA 5 and 6 respectively which suggests the hardware and BIOS set up is correct.

 

[ekÆsine]

When you connected the wires from the case to the USB header on the mobo were you certain it was connected properly? If your mouse and keyboard are PS/2 disconnect them and test with only a USB mouse & keyboard.

 

[donka]

Yes, they are all connected fine and have not changed during the rebuild.

 

[donka]

Solved this issue. It seems the 'latest' promise controller driver from Gigabyte's site is in fact incorrect - I went to the original driver off my CD and it installed with a slightly different name i.e. 'Lite' on the end of it and its running flawlessly. It seems Gigabyte have posted the wrong update on their site which is a bit frustrating as it installs fine and does operate the ATA controller fine apart from the CPU utilisation!

 

[vance43211]

I seem to have the same issue

where did you install the original drivers

on xp boot or device manger?

 

[mre30]

You should try device manger