jonifen

Hi all, I've got a bit of a problem with my PC at home... its not a major issue really and I can make do with it, but I'm sure in a month or two I'll be tearing my hair out over it (and being a male at the age of 22 (and living with 4 females)... I'm starting to get less and less to tear!). First of all... my hardware spec Intel P4 2.4GHz 533fsb 1024Mb (2x 512Mb) PC2700 DDR Gigabyte GA-8PE667 Ultra Soundblaster Live Value PCI Leadtek gf4 ti4200 8x AGP 40Gb Seagate Barracuda IV (ata100, 7200rpm) 80Gb Maxtor (unsure of exact model - its a diamondmax I think - ata133, 7200rpm) 48x LG CDRW 16x Pioneer DVD105s DVDROM 4x Pioneer DVR106d DVDRW secondly... my problem I recently changed my drives around in my system before doing a complete clean install of WinXP SP1. They were originally set as: Primary Master: 40gb seagate Primary Slave: cdrw Sec Master: dvdrom Sec Slave: dvdrw Promise Channel 1 master: 80gb maxtor I changed them to this: Primary Master: dvdrom Primary Slave: cdrw Sec Master: none Sec Slave: dvdrw (couldnt get to the jumper to change to master - not much room as its near psu) Promise Channel 1 master: 40gb seagate Promise Channel 2 master: 80gb maxtor Anyway, since the reinstall, I've noticed that when the 40gb is accessed, my mouse (intellimouse optical usb) goes jittery and sound tends to jump a bit too. All that just to say my sound is jumpy and my mouse is jittery! So to cut a long story short... can anyone give me any advice to help solve this? I have to admit, the system itself runs quicker with both HDDs on the promise controller... but if I'm moving the mouse while the HDD is being accessed (usually has to be accessed a fair bit... more than loading Outlook anyway) it goes jittery, and if I'm playing mp3s or anything, they jump slightly. So if possible, I'd like to keep both HDDs on the promise controller. I've already tried the CDRW on the promise controller in the past to keep the 40gb at least on its own cable on primary IDE, but the cdrw ran garbage (due to the ata controller not being good with atapi functions). So then... if anyone can help, its appreciated thanks in advance.

Bill, you're a legend m8 - my problem is solved!! Many many thanks for your help... Just did a bit of a quick test, sound did not jump with an mp3, mouse seems normal. Thx again

hi, I just finally got around to installing the older drivers... and my old drivers are infact (taken from device manager) version 2.0.1020.41 I snooped through the contents of my mobo cd to no avail... these are the oldest (and newest) drivers on the CD I'm gonna have a quick scout around online for the drivers you mentioned (.32 i think you said - I will double check before searching).

ok, cheers I downloaded the new ones cuz I thought it'd be a good decision... so it doesnt seem to be anything to do with my drive setup change afterall lol.

good info to know... thanks for the heads up on that bill. The drivers are the latest ones on the gigabyte website, so I imagine they are the ones you mention.

aye I had thought it ran a bit smooth to start with not been able to test anything just yet... so I should have chance tomorrow

I had a 440BX mobo made by QDI... top board imo However, I could get a p3 750MHz coppermine slot 1 chip working... I was able to try a 733MHz fcpga2 coppermine in a daughter board (prior to buying the slot 1 cpu) and it wouldnt have it at all... just black screen on boot an it made some sort of beep code. Took it back and the guy in the shop said "must not work in that mobo" and offered me the slot 1 for £3 less (even though faster - but 100mhz bus rather than 133 as the fcpga2 was). However, the mobo DID support 133fsb with the latest bios flash... you may need to flash your bios too? check your mobo manufacturer website for more details Was one of the best PCs I ever had... no troubles or anything Although I upgraded to a 2.4 p4 an its well quicker... it woulda been nice to keep the p3 as a 2nd system for myself

alternatively, you could move the virtual memory file (pagefile.sys) to your SATA hdd as that would make the VM quicker... and then I'd recommend doing a defrag on the windows drive... edit: but this is no real alternative for the performance you'd get with windows installed on the SATA imo

We used a few ASRock mobos in my old job, and although they were OK, I wouldnt have said they were particularly stable... I'd try to get a few more quid available and go for something a bit better... the gigabyte ga-7va has some overclocking features and is ~£50 inc vat. But the decision is yours of course

I can only enable/disable the extra ones (which I need one of those). I cant disable the onboard ones (as per usual on the mobos these days). WinXP does not boot when I move the main HDD between normal IDE and the ATA controller (just BSOD and reboot - I may need to edit boot.ini but am not daring to try it tbh!) But with the original drive config, pre-reinstall, it worked fine... but I thought I'd change it a bit, and after ~3hrs of installing stuff, I wish I hadnt bothered lol I'll give the sound card thing a go, and will post back after I've done this. Thanks for your quick replies and the help

hi, thanks for the quick reply I've already checked IRQs, and they are on separate numbers... but I noticed that there is a USB host in both of those IRQs, and my mouse has been jittery. Possibly related. Would it be worth trying to move the sound card in the PCI slot? Only thing I've changed is put my 40gb onto the controller with the 2nd one. The sound didnt jump when the CDRW was on the secondary promise channel in the past, so I dont think its somethin to do with both channels being used... or could it be? as i never always used the cdrw... edit: drivers are all up-to-date yeah... I downloaded new promise drivers to make a floppy disk so I could install the OS while the HDD was on the controller. And the sound card... well, creative aint the most reliable for new drivers, so the ones I'm using are the ones I've used for about a year now (and are still the newest!)