Help me please !!!! T43 is crawling

[DDGuy]

So I have my new T43 (barely a month old) working all fine untill recently (except that the Wireless radio is not recognized by AC3.81) and then for past 2-3 days all hell has broken loose.

The machine takes forever to boot (at least 3-4 times the usual time) and even longer to shutdown. While working too the CPU loads keeps shooting up (I checked with Process Explorer for a long time and something called "hardware interrupts" keeps eating CPU once in a while). Suddenly for 5-10 secs the screen would freeze and I can see the harddisk indicator glowing all this while and then the indicator will go off and I will get the control back. Any new application takes much longer to launch.

Its driving me nuts

FYI, the machine is fully covered against Virus (Mcfee latest virus definiton 4689 and latest engine 4.400) and even has Microsoft Anti-spyware. I haven't installed any new software in past 2-3 days.

Can someone help me trouble-shoot this better.

[FTC]

Hi,

It could be that your hard drive interface has reverted to PIO mode due to much errors detected. This is quite usual under XP. Look into Control panel -> System -> hardware -> device manager -> IDE/ATAPI controllers -> Primary IDE Channel -> Advanced settings -> Current transfer mode (in device 0). It should say Ultra DMA Mode 5 or just Ultra DMA... if it says PIO mode, then you fould your problem. If this is the case then try to change 'Transfer mode' to 'DMA if available'. If this does not make the 'current transfer mode' to change, then just remove the device alltogether (the 'Primary IDE channel' thing) and reboot.. it will be recreated on boot with the correct setting..

[AIX]

Check for errors/problems in Control Panel -> Administrative Tools -> Event Viewer.

[danny_isr]

Hi,

It could be that your hard drive interface has reverted to PIO mode due to much errors detected. This is quite usual under XP. Look into Control panel -> System -> hardware -> device manager -> IDE/ATAPI controllers -> Primary IDE Channel -> Advanced settings -> Current transfer mode (in device 0). It should say Ultra DMA Mode 5 or just Ultra DMA... if it says PIO mode, then you fould your problem. If this is the case then try to change 'Transfer mode' to 'DMA if available'. If this does not make the 'current transfer mode' to change, then just remove the device alltogether (the 'Primary IDE channel' thing) and reboot.. it will be recreated on boot with the correct setting..

i got "Not Applicable" is that a problem ?

[GomJabbar]

FTC is right. Follow his advice and uninstall the Primary IDE Channel. It may not hurt to uninstall the Secondary IDE Channel as well. Then reboot.

[DDGuy]

Hi,

It could be that your hard drive interface has reverted to PIO mode due to much errors detected. This is quite usual under XP. Look into Control panel -> System -> hardware -> device manager -> IDE/ATAPI controllers -> Primary IDE Channel -> Advanced settings -> Current transfer mode (in device 0). It should say Ultra DMA Mode 5 or just Ultra DMA... if it says PIO mode, then you fould your problem. If this is the case then try to change 'Transfer mode' to 'DMA if available'. If this does not make the 'current transfer mode' to change, then just remove the device alltogether (the 'Primary IDE channel' thing) and reboot.. it will be recreated on boot with the correct setting..

Wow !!! I found exactly the problem (trasnfer mode was already 'DMA if available' but current mode was PIO) and was able to resolve it as per your procedure....(now current mode is "Ultra DMA Mode 5") and ever since I am going to every one in my team having T43's and telling them to fix thiers as well....there is suddenly this happiness all around.....thanks a million and hats off to you

any idea on what made it go to PIO mode and how to prevent it from happening again.

[DDGuy]

FTC is right. Follow his advice and uninstall the Primary IDE Channel. It may not hurt to uninstall the Secondary IDE Channel as well. Then reboot.

Thanks to you as well....I had followed your advice and deleted the secondary channel as well

[DDGuy]

Check for errors/problems in Control Panel -> Administrative Tools -> Event Viewer.

Thanks for replying...I had done that but there wasn't any thing worthwhile there to point to any problem.

[FTC]

any idea on what made it go to PIO mode and how to prevent it from happening again

.. Glad it worked.

Well, XP degrades the transfer mode everytime it finds that a given threshold (number) of 'channel transmission errors' has occured. In desktop systems this is normally caused by a bad IDE cable (not properly shielded or one that does not give a good contact), but as you may know, in those laptops there is NO IDE cable, so it is most likely caused by interference from other circuits, or a bad disk connector contact.

My suggestion is that you look into the SMART counters (use NHC or DiskCheckup for instance), specially looking into the 'Ultra DMA CRC error counter' to see if it is still increasing, or it was just something that happened once. If it does increase, then the only thing you can do is dismount the disk, clean the contacts and reseat the disk connection, ...