Question for the Computer Savy

[Bajaratt]

And you only get the No-Disk Error when you right click on you're desktop ?

No, it was only once, but I haven't done much installing via my DVD-ROM in the last couple days so I'm not sure if it's still occuring. If it only happens when I put a CD in, I can live with it. I don't think I had used my DVD-ROM for over 6 months before I rebuilt my PC. I'll look into those options you gave me, thanks.

Thought i mentioned it. Dante is right though.

Boot the machine with the Windows Disc in the ROM. Along the bottom of the screen it will eventually give the option to repair windows by pressing R.

Doing so will take you to the Recovery Console. It's all driven by text and while you're there punch in "Help" for a list of commands
the option to Format along with other options will be there.

That's actually how I did the full format. I booted up with the windows CD, chose to reformat and then reinstalled.

One important thing you shouldn't overlook, and this is just a hunch on my part as to why you're HDD is not the C drive when you installed Windows.

As you said you installed a new Motherboard which ofcoarse means you had to unplug and plug back in some IDE cables.

Just a picture i took from a site. I wanted to point out how it's imparitive that the main HDD is connected to the master portion of the cable, which is the end port. If it's not at the end, the cable will not select the HDD to be the C drive.

If it's not set up like this now, then maybe it will work if you swaped it into place now. Or maybe it's already in place which makes me an ass. Anyway good luck with you're computer.

Oh, and if you do format again, i'd suggest unplugging every other drive except the HDD and the ROM drive. Just make sure the HDD is considered before the ROM, you can see this in the BIOS. And you'll have you're C drive the way you'd want it. Not saying you never thought of that. But i figured i'd say it just incase.

That could be the case, but I had my dad help rebuild my machine(mainly watching in case I fucked up) since I had never built a computer before and he mentioned the same thing; so I think I have that in correctly but I can check that later.

Another thing I would do first before doing this is toss that memory card reader. It may fix everything just by doing that.

Yeah, I'm definitely going to take that out.

 

[alanon]

Look on the mobo's manufacture's website for flash BIOS and chipset updates. It could help with your USB 2.0 detection.

 

[exodusamphi]

Ah this takes me back to the days of when I would build my own systems. Fun and challenging when your a noob at it and full of suprises.

 

[Bajaratt]

Reformatted again yesterday, that fixed my hard drive labels(took out that shitty memory reader too) and I haven't seen that windows no disk error thingy yet, so I think that solved half my problems. I haven't gotten any crap about usb 2.0 yet, so maybe that was fixed as well. Booting still takes about 2-3 minutes, but I'm just going to have to live with that and I don't reboot all that often anyways.

Thanks for the help guys.

 

[exodusamphi]

Booting can take some time, my laptop takes about 2 minutes to login screen, then another minute to load all my startup programs.

 

[Darkdante]

Reformatted again yesterday, that fixed my hard drive labels(took out that shitty memory reader too) and I haven't seen that windows no disk error thingy yet, so I think that solved half my problems. I haven't gotten any crap about usb 2.0 yet, so maybe that was fixed as well. Booting still takes about 2-3 minutes, but I'm just going to have to live with that and I don't reboot all that often anyways.

Thanks for the help guys.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BootVis

You can try that. Some say it works, I've had so so luck with it myself. Only thing I could think of to help with boot times.

 

[Bajaratt]

My winrar is still completely fucked up. When I had nothing running, and only the bare minimum running according to my task manager, a 221 Meg file in 16 pieces took me about 3 hours to unpack. It took my roommate's computer under 5 minutes. Does anyone have any idea why winrar would be so fucked up, or does anyone know of another compression/decompression program with the compatibility of winrar?

Edit: I just tried 7zip and got the exact same problem. Apparently there is something about my PC(I'm starting to think it hates me, really) that absolutely refuses to work properly when it comes to unpacking things.

 

[Euphacent]

(not reading all 5 pages)

Are your harddrives running in PIO or DMA mode? Did you install the X2 processor drive from AMD's website? Have you watched task manager while extracting the files to see what percentage of cpu WinRAR is using?

I'm assuming you're running Windows XP...
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/310751
You can also check for the DMA/PIO settings on the harddrives themselves in device manager.

It could also be some faulty memory. http://www.memtest.org/ is a really good and free memory tester.

You might also want to make sure you are running in some sort of "fail safe" mode in the BIOS (can just tell it to load the defaults, and might want to turn on the "plug and play os" option if it's not on).

 

[Bajaratt]

(not reading all 5 pages)

Are your harddrives running in PIO or DMA mode?

I have no idea what either of those mean.

Did you install the X2 processor drive from AMD's website?

No clue that I could/had to do that

Have you watched task manager while extracting the files to see what percentage of cpu WinRAR is using?

I've done this, actually. When I had winrar working, one of my core's at about 20% usage, the other wasn't being used at all.

I'm assuming you're running Windows XP...
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/310751
You can also check for the DMA/PIO settings on the harddrives themselves in device manager.

Checking that, the transfer mode is "DMA if available" and the current transfer mode is "Ultra DMA Mode 2"

It could also be some faulty memory. http://www.memtest.org/ is a really good and free memory tester.

I'll have to try checking that next time I reboot

You might also want to make sure you are running in some sort of "fail safe" mode in the BIOS (can just tell it to load the defaults, and might want to turn on the "plug and play os" option if it's not on).

This too, but I'm not sure where I'd find those settings in my BIOS, I'll have to just look around.

 

[Anttaru]

If the rare file is on you're super slow external, it will take long to extract. If you haven't done that, then transfer the desired rare file into you're C drive then extract it. Just saying that as a safty measure. It's likely you're already extracting off the C drive.

So, lets check you're HDD mode.

Control Panel (Classic view) then go to...

..System / Hardware / Device Manager...

Hit the + next to IDE ATA/ATAPIcontrollers...


You will see "Primary controller", double click it. (HDD must be at the end of the IDE cable like we spoke about earlier)

Now you're in the "Primary IDE Channel Properties"

Click on Advanced = we're looking at the Transfer modes.

Now regularly these modes are set to DMA mode, set it to "DMA mode if available" if it's not already.

If it is set to DMA mode already.... set it to "PIO only"

From what i have read PIO mode will make processing use up more resources, some have claimed this mode to return their computer and zip extracting back to normal.

If you wish to run in PIO mode but there is a drive there preventing you from moving on, uninstall it from divice manager then restart, the drive will reinstall during start up. If all is well, you're PC will be quick, and so will everything else it does.

EDIT: Ah'k i see you guys are on it.

 

[Darkdante]

You could have some bad blocks on your harddisk.

Run scandisk while you are starting up or through the recovery console. It will mark bad blocks and temporarily fix the problem. ( Or could end up running forever and killing your harddisk, lol)

If this is the problem, though, it could possibly mean your harddrive is going bad. And you could lose everything at any second.

I'd back up everything A.S.A.P.

 

[Bajaratt]

So is PIO better than DMA?

Also, on the AMD website, I got a "dual core optimizer," that was the only thing that looked like it had something to do with performance, everything else was just a temperature/speed monitor, but when I ran it, it didn't seem to do anything. I also didn't see a program folder in my start menu, but I'll have to do a more thorough check when I get back to my apartment.

I looked at my BIOS, and I didn't see that plug and play option anywhere, but I might have not found it or it might have been called something different.

 

[Anttaru]

DMA is better, it's more efficient, where as PIO uses 3 or 4 different resources to handle the task at hand. PIO can get ugly when juggling other things at once.

I hope you can finally unlock the potentials of you're new PC with this optimizer.

 

[Bajaratt]

Well, I found the optimizer in my program files, but when I double click on the .exe, it does nothing and I don't see anything come up in my task manager. I'm not sure why it's not working; this dual core thing is become a lot more trouble than it's worth.