TP T43p w/60 gig Hitachi, slow access

[osterber]

I've got a relatively new TP43p (2668-W42) that came with the 7200 RPM 60 gig Hitachi drive. My first drive started dying about 3-4 weeks after I got the Thinkpad, and IBM replaced it, and after Ghosting the image (I luckily got an image), everything was great.

Starting a couple of days ago, the drive seems very very slow. Every time the system writes out to the paging file, the mouse cursor stutters. I ran the PC Doctor in Windows, on the bootable CD, and it says everything is fine. Hitachi drive fitness says the drive is fine. I've updated to the latest BIOS (1.24) and embedded controller (1.04) updates. All of the straight-up tests say things are fine.

Disk benchmarking says I'm getting a whopping 2.0 megabytes per second in transfer speed. Wow. The Hitachi feature tool says that I'm running at the highest possible speed settings.

What to try? I'm at a loss for what might be going wrong here.

-Rick

[osterber]

IBM tech support was stumped. They're going to send a new hard drive to try.

-Rick

[BillMorrow]

did you run task manager (or the like) to see if there was something else dragging system performance down..?

or

run a spyware scanner or do a virus scan..?

[FTC]

Hi,

Most probably your disk is being run at PIO and not UDMA mode. Goto control panel -> System -> hardware -> device manager -> IDE/ATA Controllers -> Primary IDE -> Advanced, and see if "current transfer mode" is different from "Ultra DMA Mode 5". If it is, try to activate it by setting "Transfer mode" to "DMA if available" and reboot.

If DMA mode does not activate this way, you will have to remove the "Primary IDE" driver itself from device manager by choosing "uninstall". Don't worry. It will be reinstalled after reboot, but hopefully in DMA mode.

This is a quite common problem due to XP having memory of IDE channel errors and setting a slower mode to compensate... but in your case it could be that the errors could have been caused by the disk that failed.

[osterber]

FTC - Prize goes to you! Your diagnosis is spot-on. The channel had degraded to PIO mode indeed. I had to remove the IDE driver, and reboot a couple of times, but it did ultimately re-install itself, and landed in Ultra DMA Mode 5.

Things feel back to normal. I also see a Microsoft support article about this... they have a hotfix for it, and it appears they may roll something into the next XP service pack to handle this better. It's rather terrible that WinXP made that switch on me, and never told me about it.

FTC - good call.

-Rick

[superdx]

In fact I had this problem too. I use my T43 as a development machine, and have things like IBM Websphere and IBM DB2 installed on it, so I always assumed those were the culprits. I couldn't uninstall them since I needed them, so I left it as is. My mouse stuttered too, and annoyed the crap out of me, I was going to spring for a new 7200RPM drive until one day I was just being curious and checked the IDE channel settings.

"wtf, PIO?"

A little Google action and found this page: http://www.michna.com/kb/WxDMA.htm

I also applied the MS Hotfix: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/817472/

And now my T43 hasn't reverted back to PIO for at least a month.

Funny thing is that this never happened to my previous T42. I'm starting to wonder if the T43s are just time bombs waiting to go off (2010 error, just recently resolved).

[christopher_wolf]

No, the T43s are *NOT* time bombs;

The fact that MS has released a Hotfix for it and that article that you linked to clearly outlines how Windows has issues with it. It could happen to a large number of laptops.

[pisarek]

In fact I had this problem too. I use my T43 as a development machine, and have things like IBM Websphere and IBM DB2 installed on it, so I always assumed those were the culprits. I couldn't uninstall them since I needed them, so I left it as is. My mouse stuttered too, and annoyed the crap out of me, I was going to spring for a new 7200RPM drive until one day I was just being curious and checked the IDE channel settings.

"wtf, PIO?"

A little Google action and found this page: http://www.michna.com/kb/WxDMA.htm

I also applied the MS Hotfix: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/817472/

And now my T43 hasn't reverted back to PIO for at least a month.

Funny thing is that this never happened to my previous T42. I'm starting to wonder if the T43s are just time bombs waiting to go off (2010 error, just recently resolved).

You can try my script for fix this problem. You must create REG file in notepad and save as some_name.reg :

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\{4D36E96A-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}\0000]
"MasterDeviceType"=dword:00000001
"SlaveDeviceType"=dword:00000000
"SlaveDeviceDetectionTimeout"=dword:00000001
"MasterDeviceTimingMode"=dword:00010010
"MasterDeviceTimingModeAllowed"=dword:ffffffff
"MasterIdDataCheckSum"=-
"SlaveDeviceTimingMode"=dword:00000000

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\{4D36E96A-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}\0001]
"UserSlaveDeviceTimingModeAllowed"=dword:ffffffff
"UserMasterDeviceTimingModeAllowed"=dword:ffffffff
"ResetErrorCountersOnSuccess"=dword:00000001

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\{4D36E96A-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}\0002]
"UserMasterDeviceTimingModeAllowed"=dword:ffffffff
"UserSlaveDeviceTimingModeAllowed"=dword:ffffffff
"ResetErrorCountersOnSuccess"=dword:00000001




OR
You can use this: http://compservice.pl/skrypty/FixHddUdmaMode.cmd
Source of script FixHddUdmaMode.cmd:

@ECHO OFF

:: No command line parameters required

cls
ECHO.
ECHO FixHddUdmaMode.cmd v.1.0 beta for 32-bit Windows by Pawel Pisarski
ECHO.
ECHO www.compservice.pl
ECHO.
ECHO Fixing problem when IDE ATA and ATAPI disks use PIO mode after multiple
ECHO time-out or CRC errors occur
ECHO.
ECHO After the Windows IDE/ATAPI Port driver (Atapi.sys) receives a cumulative
ECHO total of six time-out or cyclical redundancy check (CRC) errors, the driver
ECHO reduces the communications speed (the transfer mode) from the highest
ECHO Direct Memory Access(DMA) mode to lower DMA modes in steps. If the driver
ECHO continues to receive time-out or CRC errors, the driver eventually reduces
ECHO the transfer mode to the slowest mode (PIO mode).
ECHO.
ECHO For more information go to the Microsoft Knowledge Base
ECHO http://support.microsoft.com/kb/817472/
ECHO or
ECHO http://www.michna.com/kb/WxDMA.htm
ECHO.
ECHO. YOU'RE RUNING THIS SCRIPT ONLY ON YOUR RESPOSIBILITY.
ECHO.

:QUESTION
set choice=
set /p choice=Do You want continue (y/n) ...
if not '%choice%'=='' set choice=%choice:~0,1%
if '%choice%'=='y' goto START
if '%choice%'=='Y' goto START
if '%choice%'=='N' goto END
if '%choice%'=='n' goto END
ECHO "%choice%" is not valid please try again
ECHO.
goto QUESTION

:: Create temporary REG file

:START
>> c:\FixHddUdmaMode.reg ECHO Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
>> c:\FixHddUdmaMode.reg ECHO.
>> c:\FixHddUdmaMode.reg ECHO [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\{4D36E96A-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}\0000]
>> c:\FixHddUdmaMode.reg ECHO "MasterDeviceType"=dword:00000001
>> c:\FixHddUdmaMode.reg ECHO "SlaveDeviceType"=dword:00000000
>> c:\FixHddUdmaMode.reg ECHO "SlaveDeviceDetectionTimeout"=dword:00000001
>> c:\FixHddUdmaMode.reg ECHO "MasterDeviceTimingMode"=dword:00010010
>> c:\FixHddUdmaMode.reg ECHO "MasterDeviceTimingModeAllowed"=dword:ffffffff
>> c:\FixHddUdmaMode.reg ECHO "MasterIdDataCheckSum"=-
>> c:\FixHddUdmaMode.reg ECHO "SlaveDeviceTimingMode"=dword:00000000
>> c:\FixHddUdmaMode.reg ECHO.
>> c:\FixHddUdmaMode.reg ECHO [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\{4D36E96A-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}\0001]
>> c:\FixHddUdmaMode.reg ECHO "UserSlaveDeviceTimingModeAllowed"=dword:ffffffff
>> c:\FixHddUdmaMode.reg ECHO "UserMasterDeviceTimingModeAllowed"=dword:ffffffff
>> c:\FixHddUdmaMode.reg ECHO "ResetErrorCountersOnSuccess"=dword:00000001
>> c:\FixHddUdmaMode.reg ECHO.
>> c:\FixHddUdmaMode.reg ECHO [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\{4D36E96A-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}\0002]
>> c:\FixHddUdmaMode.reg ECHO "UserMasterDeviceTimingModeAllowed"=dword:ffffffff
>> c:\FixHddUdmaMode.reg ECHO "UserSlaveDeviceTimingModeAllowed"=dword:ffffffff
>> c:\FixHddUdmaMode.reg ECHO "ResetErrorCountersOnSuccess"=dword:00000001
>> c:\FixHddUdmaMode.reg ECHO.

:: import the REG file and replace UDMA entry
REGEDIT /S c:\FixHddUdmaMode.reg
:: Delete the temporary REG file
del c:\FixHddUdmaMode.reg

cls
ECHO.
ECHO.
ECHO.
ECHO.
ECHO Now, Your computer must be reboot to made changes !
ECHO.
ECHO.
:End
ECHO.
ECHO.
pause
ECHO.
ECHO.


After run this script, notebook must be reboot and then will work correctly.

[ZildjianKX]

These forums rock, this fixed my problem. I tried anti-virus, spyware, and defragging and couldn't figure out what the problem was.

Removing the driver for the Primary IDE Channel kept bluescreening after rebooting, but this worked great:

http://www.michna.com/kb/WxDMA.htm

Thanks again guys/gals.