Constant Hard Drive Access + Upgrading the Vid Card on T43

[Drezdon]

IBM T43
Model #: 1875-dmu (integrated vid and sound)

Yanked the original HD and put in a (slower, bah, but not by much) larger hard drive (went from the default 5200 drive to a 4700 (I think that's the rpm speed)).

Well, first off, I've run into a bit of a problem. Something is accessing my HD on a regular basis, and whenever it does, it freezes teh system momentarily. It's not a show stopper, but it's really aggravating.

Just so you know, I've gone through and eliminated every program I can find that isn't essential (Access Connections was the first to go! Wretched program!) I've defragged, reset my pagefile space, etc, etc.

However, even when I take everything out that is causing pagefaults when the system is idle, I'm still getting what seems to be a bit of thrashing every few seconds or so.

I don't have a virus or spyware.

Any ideas?

Second question is whether or not it's possible to install new graphics card on T43's? I have the 128MB integrated Intel vid card. I'd love to put in a newer, non-integrated, and spiffy new mobile vid card from either nvidia or ati (probably ati).

If anyone knows if this is possible, please let me know.

[DIGITALgimpus]

1. It must be a 4200 RPM drive. AFAIK there are no 4700 RPM drives.
2. For constant disk access, try booting in safe mode, see what happens.
3. To figure out what's causing constant disk access, you could try using Filemon though note that it's a developer utility, and not designed to be user friendly (it's for people who really understand what they are doing).
4. No, you can't update the graphics card without at least replacing the whole motherboard, and that gets very expensive. Your best bet would be to stick with what you have.

[Drezdon]

Yeah, it's 4200, hehe. I was so tired, I couldn't remember the RPM speed.

Thanks so much for the utility! I've been looking for something like that for a very long time. I'm gonna give it a shot.

/sigh

I figured that it wasn't possible to change out the vid card, but I was holding out hope.

At any rate, thanks very much!

[jdhurst]

I set up two 1875 machines for clients (different thread - look for stuttering). One machine worked, one didn't (slow, constant disk access). I replaced the hard drive and it is working fine. Maybe that hard drive is just too slow. ... JD Hurst