Help me fix a system that I can't afford to replace right now

I was all set to replace this system is a quad-CPU system with 8 GB
running Vista Ultimate 64 bit (for editing large Photoshop files). But
my business has tanked with the economic crisis, and it looks like all
my customers are hurting also.

How to cut expenses? That's easy: don't build that new system.

So I have this older but reasonably powerful system that has two
nagging problems, and I want to finally fix them, because it looks
like I'll need to keep this system in service for at least six months,
probably longer.

1. When I am doing intensive disk operations, the system keyboard and
mouse pretty much seize up. That includes a copy/move operation to
another system over my home LAN. Also a chkdsk operation, which I
have to do frequently because of all the crashes.

2. My system crashes way to often. It happens only in these
situations:

1. I have just opened up Outlook 2003 (no comments, please!) and
Outlook is listing all the "reminders." I know I'm "safe" if Outlook
starts up and all the Reminders have been listed.
2. I click on a file in a window, so I can copy/move/unzip it. That
is, the crash never occurs during one of these operations.

What is weird is that my wife has almost the identical system, but
hers is rock-solid. I'd appreciate any suggestions to improve the
disk performance and track down these very annoying crashes. If I
could fix only one of these problems, I would focus on the crashes,
because they waste so much of my time.

Here is the system, which is not overclocked:

Asus A7M-266D motherboard.

Twin Athlon XP 2000, unlocked to MP. (Device Manager sees 2 MP
2000+.)
2 x 1 GB of Micron memory
Matrox Parhelia 128 video card. (My wife' system has an old Matrox
card.)
Adaptec SA-2100 SATA controller with 4 x 320 GB Seagate 7200.10
drives. (My wife's system has a vanilla PATA drive.)
Logitech MX 3200 wireless keyboard and wireless LASER mouse.
PC Power and Cooling Power Supply. I forget the exact rating, but it
is at least 500 W.
Pioneer DVR-111D DVD-RW drive. (My wife's system has a Lite-On CD-RW
drive.)
LSI Logic SCSI adapter, with Exabyte 8 mm tape drive attached. (My
system only.)

Win XP SP 2 with Microsoft auto-update.

Thanks

-AH

Andrew Hamilton wrote:
I was all set to replace this system is a quad-CPU system with 8 GB
running Vista Ultimate 64 bit (for editing large Photoshop files). But
my business has tanked with the economic crisis, and it looks like all
my customers are hurting also.

How to cut expenses? That's easy: don't build that new system.

So I have this older but reasonably powerful system that has two
nagging problems, and I want to finally fix them, because it looks
like I'll need to keep this system in service for at least six months,
probably longer.

1. When I am doing intensive disk operations, the system keyboard and
mouse pretty much seize up. That includes a copy/move operation to
another system over my home LAN. Also a chkdsk operation, which I
have to do frequently because of all the crashes.

2. My system crashes way to often. It happens only in these
situations:

1. I have just opened up Outlook 2003 (no comments, please!) and
Outlook is listing all the "reminders." I know I'm "safe" if Outlook
starts up and all the Reminders have been listed.
2. I click on a file in a window, so I can copy/move/unzip it. That
is, the crash never occurs during one of these operations.

What is weird is that my wife has almost the identical system, but
hers is rock-solid. I'd appreciate any suggestions to improve the
disk performance and track down these very annoying crashes. If I
could fix only one of these problems, I would focus on the crashes,
because they waste so much of my time.

Here is the system, which is not overclocked:

Asus A7M-266D motherboard.

Twin Athlon XP 2000, unlocked to MP. (Device Manager sees 2 MP
2000+.)
2 x 1 GB of Micron memory
Matrox Parhelia 128 video card. (My wife' system has an old Matrox
card.)
Adaptec SA-2100 SATA controller with 4 x 320 GB Seagate 7200.10
drives. (My wife's system has a vanilla PATA drive.)
Logitech MX 3200 wireless keyboard and wireless LASER mouse.
PC Power and Cooling Power Supply. I forget the exact rating, but it
is at least 500 W.
Pioneer DVR-111D DVD-RW drive. (My wife's system has a Lite-On CD-RW
drive.)
LSI Logic SCSI adapter, with Exabyte 8 mm tape drive attached. (My
system only.)

Win XP SP 2 with Microsoft auto-update.

Thanks

-AH

AMD762
http://www.amd.com/us-en/assets/cont...docs/24416.pdf

AMD768
http://www.amd.com/us-en/assets/cont...docs/24472.pdf

Socket0 Socket1
| |
+-----+------+
|
| FSB266
|
AGP ---- AMD762 ----- Memory_slots
|
| PCI 64bit/66MHz
|
+ ------- 2 PCI 64/66 slots
|
AMD768 ----- 3 PCI 32/33 slots
|
(other I/O)

One of the problems with the chipset, is the performance
of the PCI busses. Something like a 25MB/sec transfer
rate limit may be observed, on the three lower
slots.

Test with HDTach or HDTune.

HDTune 2.55 is free, and does a read-only benchmark. With properly
functioning busses, and normal I/O interfaces, you should be able
to see the gently curved characteristic, of disk I/O performance.
For example, my disk might offer 60MB/sec transfer speeds near sector0
and 40MB/sec near the end of the disk. That would be while connected
to an ATA100 capable Southbridge port. Or, I'd see similar if
I used my Promise Ultra133 IDE card, plugged into a PCI slot.
As far as I know, the PCI bus on my current motherboard,
delivers 110-120MB/sec on the 32 bit/33MHz bus.

http://www.hdtune.com/download.html (also has an Info tab, good for IDE disks)
http://www.simplisoftware.com/Public...request=HdTach

If you run the benchmark and get a flat line, limited to some particular
speed, then you look to cabling or bus issues. So you might even see
a straight line clipped at 25MB/sec.

I think there are other benchmarks around, like one by Atto. i don't know
if HDTach or HDTune are limited as to the disk interface or not.

For your crashing problem, I don't have anything to offer there. In
Linux, apparently you have to switch to MPS 1.1, and use NOAPIC
to get booted, but after that it works. I don't know if any of that
has implications for Windows or not (like whether Windows would be
upset by some aspect of that motherboard + BIOS or not).

******

Based on the above -

1) Try slot juggling, remembering that putting a lower speed
card in the 64 bit bus, will slow everything down. Try to
host the disks you use off a controller located in a 64 bit
slot. Put all the "loser" cards, in the lower slots.
If you need to free up a slot, host the backups on your
wife's machine :-)

2) For crash debugging, simplify the setup (disconnect stuff)
and try whatever test case is easiest to create a crash.
As an alternative, you could do more testing in Linux,
after getting the appropriate info as to what command line
switches would work best to allow booting the system. If Linux
refuses to crash, but Windows does, it may imply that Windows
isn't crazy about that dual processor setup.

Perhaps the 2cpu.com forums have more comments about these
762/768 dual socket motherboards. Several manufacturers made
them. You can search the 2cpu.com domain, using this search
engine, and entering 2cpu.com for the site to be searched.
There are some people who are stable, and other people who
have tried everything, and still crash.

http://www.altavista.com/web/adv

As for upgrading, you could go for a low end AMD system,
and at least get a system that doesn't crash. Of course,
finding a motherboard with the slots you need, is going
to be a problem. Even a low end dual core should be
comparable to the crash-box you've got now.

HTH,
Paul

Andrew Hamilton wrote:

I was all set to replace this system is a quad-CPU system with 8 GB
running Vista Ultimate 64 bit (for editing large Photoshop files). But
my business has tanked with the economic crisis, and it looks like all
my customers are hurting also.

How to cut expenses? That's easy: don't build that new system.

So I have this older but reasonably powerful system that has two
nagging problems, and I want to finally fix them, because it looks
like I'll need to keep this system in service for at least six months,
probably longer.

1. When I am doing intensive disk operations, the system keyboard and
mouse pretty much seize up. That includes a copy/move operation to
another system over my home LAN. Also a chkdsk operation, which I
have to do frequently because of all the crashes.

2. My system crashes way to often. It happens only in these
situations:

1. I have just opened up Outlook 2003 (no comments, please!) and
Outlook is listing all the "reminders." I know I'm "safe" if Outlook
starts up and all the Reminders have been listed.
2. I click on a file in a window, so I can copy/move/unzip it. That
is, the crash never occurs during one of these operations.

What is weird is that my wife has almost the identical system, but
hers is rock-solid. I'd appreciate any suggestions to improve the
disk performance and track down these very annoying crashes. If I
could fix only one of these problems, I would focus on the crashes,
because they waste so much of my time.

Here is the system, which is not overclocked:

Asus A7M-266D motherboard.

Twin Athlon XP 2000, unlocked to MP. (Device Manager sees 2 MP
2000+.)
2 x 1 GB of Micron memory
Matrox Parhelia 128 video card. (My wife' system has an old Matrox
card.)
Adaptec SA-2100 SATA controller with 4 x 320 GB Seagate 7200.10
drives. (My wife's system has a vanilla PATA drive.)
Logitech MX 3200 wireless keyboard and wireless LASER mouse.
PC Power and Cooling Power Supply. I forget the exact rating, but it
is at least 500 W.
Pioneer DVR-111D DVD-RW drive. (My wife's system has a Lite-On CD-RW
drive.)
LSI Logic SCSI adapter, with Exabyte 8 mm tape drive attached. (My
system only.)

Win XP SP 2 with Microsoft auto-update.

Thanks

-AH

Here's a couple of cheap guesses:

1.Overheating. Not the most likely, but the fix is *free* if you are
handy: open the case, clean the filters, blow the crud out of the
heatsinks, blow out the PS, and blow off the fans.

2.Aging Power Supply. The caps in any PS do deteriorate with age,
leading to reduced power and more ripple/noise. And, since you do
have a lot of loads on that PS, you might experiment by removing
a few devices (the DVD and the mag.tape, maybe a couple of HDs) to
see if that makes the problem go away; or, replace that VGA with
a low-power one.

3.Aging MB. Since you have two similar PCs, you could interchange
the MBs for a while to see if the MB is the culprit. If that's it,
the most likely cause is caps on the MB -- they could be replaced if
you are handy with a soldering iron and cheap, but for most folks I'd
recommend buying a different MB.
--
Cheers, Bob

"Andrew Hamilton" wrote in message ...
I was all set to replace this system is a quad-CPU system with 8 GB
running Vista Ultimate 64 bit (for editing large Photoshop files). But
my business has tanked with the economic crisis, and it looks like all
my customers are hurting also.

How to cut expenses? That's easy: don't build that new system.

So I have this older but reasonably powerful system that has two
nagging problems, and I want to finally fix them, because it looks
like I'll need to keep this system in service for at least six months,
probably longer.

1. When I am doing intensive disk operations, the system keyboard and
mouse pretty much seize up. That includes a copy/move operation to
another system over my home LAN. Also a chkdsk operation, which I
have to do frequently because of all the crashes.

2. My system crashes way to often. It happens only in these
situations:

1. I have just opened up Outlook 2003 (no comments, please!) and
Outlook is listing all the "reminders." I know I'm "safe" if Outlook
starts up and all the Reminders have been listed.
2. I click on a file in a window, so I can copy/move/unzip it. That
is, the crash never occurs during one of these operations.

What is weird is that my wife has almost the identical system, but
hers is rock-solid. I'd appreciate any suggestions to improve the
disk performance and track down these very annoying crashes. If I
could fix only one of these problems, I would focus on the crashes,
because they waste so much of my time.

Here is the system, which is not overclocked:

Asus A7M-266D motherboard.

Twin Athlon XP 2000, unlocked to MP. (Device Manager sees 2 MP
2000+.)
2 x 1 GB of Micron memory
Matrox Parhelia 128 video card. (My wife' system has an old Matrox
card.)
Adaptec SA-2100 SATA controller with 4 x 320 GB Seagate 7200.10
drives. (My wife's system has a vanilla PATA drive.)
Logitech MX 3200 wireless keyboard and wireless LASER mouse.
PC Power and Cooling Power Supply. I forget the exact rating, but it
is at least 500 W.
Pioneer DVR-111D DVD-RW drive. (My wife's system has a Lite-On CD-RW
drive.)
LSI Logic SCSI adapter, with Exabyte 8 mm tape drive attached. (My
system only.)

Win XP SP 2 with Microsoft auto-update.

Check for any updates from AMD, Via (if using a Via chipset), and
especially Adaptec.

Of those components, the two most likely culprits (from a driver and
software standpoint) are the Exabyte tape drive and Adaptec SA2100.
If you have any auto-start services related to the tape drive, try setting
them to Disabled (just for a test) and see if your crashing problems
are reduced or eliminated.

"nospam" wrote in message . ..
Check for any updates from AMD, Via (if using a Via chipset), and
especially Adaptec.

And Logitech.

In article , Ahamilton90900
@yahoo.com says...
I was all set to replace this system is a quad-CPU system with 8 GB
running Vista Ultimate 64 bit (for editing large Photoshop files). But
my business has tanked with the economic crisis, and it looks like all
my customers are hurting also.

How to cut expenses? That's easy: don't build that new system.

So I have this older but reasonably powerful system that has two
nagging problems, and I want to finally fix them, because it looks
like I'll need to keep this system in service for at least six months,
probably longer.

1. When I am doing intensive disk operations, the system keyboard and
mouse pretty much seize up. That includes a copy/move operation to
another system over my home LAN. Also a chkdsk operation, which I
have to do frequently because of all the crashes.

2. My system crashes way to often. It happens only in these
situations:

1. I have just opened up Outlook 2003 (no comments, please!) and
Outlook is listing all the "reminders." I know I'm "safe" if Outlook
starts up and all the Reminders have been listed.
2. I click on a file in a window, so I can copy/move/unzip it. That
is, the crash never occurs during one of these operations.

What is weird is that my wife has almost the identical system, but
hers is rock-solid. I'd appreciate any suggestions to improve the
disk performance and track down these very annoying crashes. If I
could fix only one of these problems, I would focus on the crashes,
because they waste so much of my time.

Here is the system, which is not overclocked:

Asus A7M-266D motherboard.

Twin Athlon XP 2000, unlocked to MP. (Device Manager sees 2 MP
2000+.)
2 x 1 GB of Micron memory
Matrox Parhelia 128 video card. (My wife' system has an old Matrox
card.)
Adaptec SA-2100 SATA controller with 4 x 320 GB Seagate 7200.10
drives. (My wife's system has a vanilla PATA drive.)
Logitech MX 3200 wireless keyboard and wireless LASER mouse.
PC Power and Cooling Power Supply. I forget the exact rating, but it
is at least 500 W.
Pioneer DVR-111D DVD-RW drive. (My wife's system has a Lite-On CD-RW
drive.)
LSI Logic SCSI adapter, with Exabyte 8 mm tape drive attached. (My
system only.)

Win XP SP 2 with Microsoft auto-update.

Thanks

-AH


First 2 things I would immedietly look at is harddrive & memory.

1. Use manufacturer utility disk for HD.....Or:

http://www.simplisoftware.com/Public...request=HdTach

As mentioned by Paul HD Tach will also give an indication of read burst
speeds. I've used it many times on questionable drives & it gave me
indications, even if it doesn't still run other tests. The downloadable
version is free but will only do a read test. A write test is done on an
empty drive.

2. Memory......Personally I like Windows Memory Diagnostic is efficient
enuff fer a QUICK indication with no long scans. I've used it on a
special disk on MANY occasions & had some symptoms you described and was
able to isolate the problem quickly.

http://www.softpedia.com/get/Tweak/M...osoft-Windows-
Memory-Diagnostic.shtml

(sorry fer the wrap, copy/paste each individual line in your browser.
Just clicking won't work)