SATA drive problem, etc.

So after all my rebooting problems a month or so ago, I decided to
upgrade my PC instead of pissing around piecemeal, and replaced the
mobo, processor, video card and memory, now having a Core 2 Duo E6600 in
an MSI P6N Platinum, which uses the nForce 650i SLI chipset, and also
2GB Corsair XMS2 DDR2 800 and an XFX GeForce 8800GTS 320mb Extreme.
Rebooting problem gone, and things mostly are back to normal (but faster).

Installation went fine, and I was able to do the replacements without
reinstalling Windows. The BIOS is version 1.0 and I know it's still a
bit buggy - for instance, I can't change the memory voltage, the only
option is "auto", so I can't change the latency timings to the spec
4-4-4-12 from what I understand is the default 5-5-5-18 without stuff
eventually crashing. I don't plan on flashing the BIOS until MSI
releases their next update.

What I discovered this week is that my only SATA hard drive isn't up to
snuff. Windows is on an older PATA drive, and I had all my programs on
that and another PATA drive, but I finally installed something other
than data on the SATA drive this week, the copy of Ghost Recon that came
with the video card. It took forever to install, something like a half
hour, and the game was very slow in starting up and performance seemed a
bit lacking. So after tweaking the game some I finally uninstalled it
and reinstalled on a PATA drive, and that took much less time and it
works much better now.

So what can be wrong with my SATA drive? I installed the latest
motherboard drivers from nVidia at installation, and my understanding is
that with SATA drives there are no jumpers to set or DMA settings to
tweak or anything along those lines. The drive is a Western Digital
WD2500KS, which is a SATA 300 drive. Having only used it for data
storage, I don't know if the speed issue was present in the old setup,
but I never noticed anything unusual. I don't see anything unusual
indicated in Windows, SiSoft Sandra, etc. It's connected to the 1st SATA
port, and I'm using a 4-pin molex power connector, 500W Antec PS.

Thanks in advance for any help...

On Sat, 21 Apr 2007 10:06:49 -0700, Mark N
<menusbaum.RemoveThis@NYETSPAMearthlink.net> wrote:

>So after all my rebooting problems a month or so ago, I decided to
>upgrade my PC instead of pissing around piecemeal, and replaced the
>mobo, processor, video card and memory, now having a Core 2 Duo E6600 in
>an MSI P6N Platinum, which uses the nForce 650i SLI chipset, and also
>2GB Corsair XMS2 DDR2 800 and an XFX GeForce 8800GTS 320mb Extreme.
>Rebooting problem gone, and things mostly are back to normal (but faster).
>
>Installation went fine, and I was able to do the replacements without
>reinstalling Windows. The BIOS is version 1.0 and I know it's still a
>bit buggy - for instance, I can't change the memory voltage, the only
>option is "auto", so I can't change the latency timings to the spec
>4-4-4-12 from what I understand is the default 5-5-5-18 without stuff
>eventually crashing. I don't plan on flashing the BIOS until MSI
>releases their next update.
>
>What I discovered this week is that my only SATA hard drive isn't up to
>snuff. Windows is on an older PATA drive, and I had all my programs on
>that and another PATA drive, but I finally installed something other
>than data on the SATA drive this week, the copy of Ghost Recon that came
>with the video card. It took forever to install, something like a half
>hour, and the game was very slow in starting up and performance seemed a
>bit lacking. So after tweaking the game some I finally uninstalled it
>and reinstalled on a PATA drive, and that took much less time and it
>works much better now.
>
>So what can be wrong with my SATA drive? I installed the latest
>motherboard drivers from nVidia at installation, and my understanding is
>that with SATA drives there are no jumpers to set or DMA settings to
>tweak or anything along those lines. The drive is a Western Digital
>WD2500KS, which is a SATA 300 drive. Having only used it for data
>storage, I don't know if the speed issue was present in the old setup,
>but I never noticed anything unusual. I don't see anything unusual
>indicated in Windows, SiSoft Sandra, etc. It's connected to the 1st SATA
>port, and I'm using a 4-pin molex power connector, 500W Antec PS.
>
>Thanks in advance for any help...


Check Windows Event Viewer to see if anything seemingly
related is listed.

Use Sandra's benchmark for the drive and compare to the
scores it has for other drives.

Recheck the connector to the drive to confirm it is seated
good, and at the motherboard end. If there is any doubt
about it, try another cable.

Were you implying there is no bios update available that is
newer than the presently installed version? If there is
one, go ahead and update the bios if the notes suggest
anything useful is patched.

I am wondering if you had tried to change the memory
voltage, from "auto" to manual. Often more choices then
appear, but were hidden until you make that change. Also
others have observed the ability to change memory voltage,
for example they list the range here, "1.80V to 2.80 in .05V
increments"

http://www.anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.aspx?i=2946&p=2

When you wrote that changing timings w/o voltage means
things eventually crash, did you test the stability with
Memtest86+ before booting windows? Don't make memory
changes then run windows without first attempting to confirm
some level of stability, otherwise there is significant risk
of file or registry corruption, especially when copying
files back and forth. It's even possible the memory isn't
entirely stable at it's present settings, I mean if you
haven't yet checked it, how will you know for sure?