Need expert help strange problem

I gave my grandsons ( 18 years and 15 years) my old computer with TI 9 on it. Running XP home, 1.5 gig ram 2 internal 80 gig drives. (Can't remember the cpu, somewhere around 2.2 mhz) This computer was blazing fast when handed over to them. I showed them a couple of times how to make an image using the windows environment. They just can't seem to find the time to make images, so the 2 image I made are the only ones they have the last being Jan 19/08. They told me their computer was really slow now. I figured a virus or adware/scamware. So I went in and cleaned all the clutter, updated the virus/adware programs, ran them and it helped a little.
I then decided I would backup and maybe try recovering an old image, if they needed any data they could mount the new image and copy and paste.
The image took two hours and 15 minutes. ( used to take 7-9 mins). I popped in the rescue disk and it took 7 minutes. I presume that somewhere along the way the driver got changed for the "C" drive in windows. It is only about 7 months old. I have no idea how to change/update the driver for the main drive. I doubt very much if this is a TI problem. I have seen so many knowlegable people on this forum, I was hoping that I could maybe get some help.
Is their anyway to mount an old image and see what the driver for the "C" drive use to be and compare the two? The drive is set for DMA as I had set it before giving the computer to them. Any help would be appreciated.

 

May or may not help, but if the drive itself seems slow and it's IDE –
Right click on the IDE channel the drive is on in Deice Manager (usually Primary, not like mine, which is Secondary) and select Uninstall. It will give you a warning and reply OK. Re-boot. Windows will find new hardware and ask for another re-boot. Then you’re done.

 

Did you run msconfig and see what stuff has been added to the startup?

 

Have you asked them how much "free" music they have downloaded? Check for BitTorrent, or other downloading software. Every teenager's computer that I've been asked to check because it was slow was so infested with viruses, rootkits and spyware that I wouldn't let it in my house, and cleaning it would cost at least $300 at my rates, if it could be cleaned. Suddenly, the free music isn't free.

Restore the old image that you made, and it will be fast again. Delete the image that you made recently so that they lose all the illegal music. Tell them that it was all infected which isn't true, but why encourage that sort of behavior.

Oh, expect them to tell you that they never, ever downloaded anything that they didn't pay for. That's teen language today for I've never had a cigarette, a drink, sex or anything else you don't approve of. Kids are smart. They don't confess anymore. TV has taught them some valuable lessons. It's not the crime shows, it's the news. They see this behavior from businessmen and polititicians. They identify with the leaders of our country.

Am I cynical. No, I love teenagers. I just know that they don't tell the truth about this sort of stuff, so I don't ask. And don't tell the parents, they don't have a clue.

 

Hello dbknox,

According to the information you've provided us with (low performance of the software under Windows and acceptable one under Acronis Bootable Rescue CD) such a behavior of Acronis True Image can be caused by two reasons: outdated Acronis SnapAPI driver (it's a driver which is responsible for all the operations Acronis True Image performs under Windows) and 3rd party software which prevents Acronis software from working correctly. So please try to fix the issue in the following way.

Download the latest version of SnapAPI drivers and install update (you'll be given a choice whether to install update with enabled or disabled logging, please choose "disabled logging"). Then please reboot computer and try to back up under Windows again.

If the issue still persists please do the following. Create Device Tree screen shots as described in this post. Then please submit a request for technical support with the attached screen shots and the link to this thread. This will let us identify 3rd party software interfering with Acronis True Image.

Thank you
--
Nikita Sakharov

 

To TheWeaz I do think I will try your idea first.
seekforever yes I did check msconfig hardly anything is in the start menu, other then anti-virus.
jmk94903 I agree with all you say, I have always told my grandchildren what you advise, but the temptation is there. I have always believed that teenagers/children online are the worse thing for computers. I will try updating the drivers first and then in goes the old image.
Nikita Sakharov I do not believe for a minute my problem has anything to do with Acronis. Everything is running slow! When I go back to my daughter's I will try to validate the new image I made this week and make sure I am able to mount it. Then I will restore the old image and they can copy and paste any data that they need.
Thanks to all of you for your ideas. When I do get back to that computer, I will report back here and let you know how I made out.

 

Random thoughts –
Hardware – most HD manufacturers have free utilities to check their drives. Try running that.
Software –
I’ll assume your AV, spyware, ad-ware software is reputable and up-to-date and that you ran full scans.
Some free utilities that might offer some insight:
Windows Task Manager - look for unusual processes. High CPU usage.
Process Explorer – like Windows Task Manager, but a little more detail, like path to running tasks. Look for anything suspicious.
TCPView – if your firewall app doesn’t provide a list of connections, this will show you whose connected to the net. Again, look for strangers.
NetMeter – keeps totals of download/upload amounts and a real-time meter of network traffic.

 

Very through TheWeaz again I thank-you, I appeciate all the help and suggestions I can get. I did all the above re:anti-virus etc. ( Avast, spybot,adaware and a couple of rootkit scanners. The computer shows very little usage cpu or ram. All the running processors looked fine to me. I down loaded a process explorer to double check. I turned off any running processes I wasn't sure of. Although the usage shows all is normal.
If it was still my computer the images would be only a couple of days old and it would be just a matter of restoring to a couple of days ago. I keep about 20 images on two seperate external drives. I think they are going to have to live with an old image. I am sure it would be just a matter of mounting the new image I just made and getting any data needed.
Troubles like this makes one thankful for "imaging software".

 

dbknox,

Is the HD still set for UDMA?

 

Does all the RAM still show has available? Maybe a stick went bad.

 

That was going to be my guess .... that it got into PIO mode.

 

That was my first thought as well - it’s happened to me. The steps in post #2 should have cleared that up, at least until Windows decided to drop it down again, if that’s what’s happening.
The only other thing I can think to check would be the fans. The CPU may get throttled down if it gets too hot.

 

Well this is great all the help, thanks for the attention guys it is really appreciated. I wish I was near enough to the computer to experiment.


Brian K

Yes it is.
DwnNdrty

My first thought too, If only it was that simple, but still two hours for what will copy with UDMA set, in 7-8 minutes, I don't recall UDMA making the disk that much faster, but still, it was certainly worth looking at.
TheWeaz

If my daughter comes out this week-end I will ask her to bring the tower out with her and try your solution in post #2, as I fully believe also that this will work.
I was just a little confused how to update or uninstall a driver that has the OS on that drive. ( Don't know if I am clear here or not.)
I see by your "insert" that you do it in the IDE. That confirmed what I was thinking. Thank-you. You could be right about the overheating, I will check the fans and clean out the dirt when I next have a chance.

The ram shows up, the computer has 3 500meg sticks, even if one was bad 1 gig still was much faster then what it is now and I was still able to copy an image in about 7 minutes, before I added the third stick. I only added more ram because I was working on my home movies a lot, otherwise I never noticed a big jump in speed going from 1 gig to 1.5 gig.
I am so sure this is a driver problem.

All the hints that I get here does help, it gives me lots of ammunition, once more thanks guys it is so appreciated.

 

If you have not done so recently, I would boot into the Recovery Console and check each partition for errors. Example:
Chkdsk C: /R
The map command will show you all the drive letters to be checked.

Ever so often (rarely) my computer will slow and become very very slow. Performing an error check usually brings it back to normal.

As a part of cleanup, you might check the XP system restore option and check to make sure it is not taking up a lot of space. This is user adjustable. Also, Disk Cleanup/more options allows you to delete all but the last checkpoint.

For cleanup, I use a combination of Ccleaner and Easy Cleaner 2.0. Both also used for registry cleaning. I have found these to be safe and have used them on my XP Pro for several years.

A program such as TreeSize Free from http://jam-software.com to be very helpful in finding what folders are consuming lots of space.
http://www.jam-software.com/freeware/index.shtml

 

It will only work if the computer is in PIO mode and changes to UDMA.

Would you like to try HD Tune? What is the Maximum Transfer Rate of each HD? Get the free one.

http://www.hdtune.com/

 

Thanks GroverH I did run the programs CCleaner and Easycleaner.CCleaner and easycleaner. I did do a checkdisk before I tried the rescue disk. A question here, would a disk with errors run okay in the Linux environment?
( because it ran so much faster in the Linux environment, I didn't pursue the trouble as if though it was a bad disk anymore.)
The system restore was set at 1 gig sometime ago. I did have a check to make sure nobody expanded it. Actuially it was shut off by someone.
I have a program on it ( it was my old computer) can't remember the name of it. It was for showing the disk layout and I see nothing out of sorts.
Because making an image runs at a much more normal speed using the Linux environment and I couldn't see any high cpu or ram usage while doing one in windows, I came to the conculsion that it was probaby the driver.
I wish I could remember all I tried so I could post it here and save people time trying to help me. I hope we have all the bases covered now.
Before I forget I did defrag the drive, ran the malware programs and the Anti-virus.

 

I finally made it to my Grandson's computer, made an image using the Rescue CD and followed the advice by TheWeaz it worked like a charm.
I did notice that although the DMA was set in the selection window the current transfer mode was "PIO only" and I couldn't change it. Upon uninstalling the primary IDE channel and computer the "transfer mode" was set to DMA.
My Grandsons both asked me to say "thank you" to TheWeaz . They now have their "super fast" computer again.
TheWeaz your the man!!

 

dbknox,

Thanks for the feedback. PIO mode certainly makes a computer run slowly. If you had checked the Maximum Transfer Rate with HD Tune you would have found a rate of about 5 MB/sec as opposed to an expected rate of 50 MB/sec.

 

This situation sounds like you might be able to make use of the software called LogMeIn (similar to the more popular GoToMyPc) where you can sit at your computer and access another computer that has high speed internet access. LogMeIn has a free version that works for many situations.

Just a couple days ago I used it to correct something on a relative's laptop that is in another country.

 

Brian thanks, I have HD tune on that computer, I had already decided from TheWeaz's post that this was the way to go. HD tune would surely have confirmed it.The main trouble is by the time I get all the "maintenance" that I think should be done,( like scan the disks and clean out the junk, check the registery, It is time to head back to "the sticks").
I am sitting on their computer now using the "DSL" highspeed, which I finally tweaked so they can get some speed, I am loving High speed. Owners of high speed probably don't know how lucky they are. This is nice if only I could download all my patches and take them home with me.

I have often wondered about this I have two daughters that live a fair drive away and I am always spending most of my "visits" working on their computers. I wonder how well this works with dial-up, has anybody tried it?

 

It wouldn't hurt to try ... they would have to install the software though. Only the computer being accessed needs the software. To log in to a system you need an email address and password (don't use the password associated with the email address), which you also need to sign up in order to install the software, so you might want to create a new one for that purpose, Hotmail or Yahoo will do.

 

I know we are now drifting OT, but for “remote control” I have used LogMeIn, UltraVNC and even MS Remote Assistance, all with good results.

 

But still very good info. for other members.

 

For sure!! Thanks guys and all those that offered suggestions, I am sure that this has been a learning experience for others it has been for me.
I will look into the aforementioned programs, I would still like to know if any others have had experience using one or more of the above mentioned programs on Dial-up.
Both my daughters use DSL so there end would be fine.

 

See if this link has the answer:
https://secure.logmein.com/forum/tm.aspx?m=17965