Windows XP Home slow start up and stutters

[dancequeen]

Hello all! Newbie to the forum but in need of help, my husband is driving me crazy with this.

My husband has a HP Pavilion dv5000 laptop with windows XP home.  His computer was working just fine until about a month ago.  Now when you turn on the laptop it takes forever to boot up, then when it does the login music stutters and then the computer starts up.  Some times it takes a couple of minutes but it does load up.  If he tries to play any of his music it stutters.

I did a complete diagnostic on it, check for virus, we have widows live one care and anti-virus programs, no virus, everything checked out good.  Did the registry cleaner (RegCur) removed a lot of stuff and its still is slow and stutters.  We took it to Best Buy and the Geek squad did the same thing I did and said they didn't know what the problem was and that he could leave it there and for $200 they would wipe the laptop clean and re install it back to factory like when we bought it.   It is about 2 1/2 years old and he doesn't do a lot on it but play on a poker site and check email from his boss.  Very little web browsing and he knows not to open email he doesn't know etc.

This start after his son brought over a new UN opened music CD to play and place on his laptop, he swears that this is what caused this entire problem.  He doesn't really know very much about computers, I have used and owned a computer since 1997, but i am not a computer wiz but did what I know needed to be done.

Is there anyway to pin point the problem and fix it or are we going to have to wipe it clean and start over?
Can we wipe it clean our selves and re install the recovery disc's or do we have to pay to have it done?
If we can do it our selves what is the easiest and best way?

Thank you and sorry for the long post, but I know more is better when it comes to this.

[IH8U]

Check to see if your hard drive might be running under pio mode by right clicking my computer, selecting properties, the hardware tab, device manager and find IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers. Expand that then right click on primary IDE channel, select properties, select Advanced Settings Tab, and look at current transfer mode. If it's set to PIO Only then close that box and right click on primary IDE channel and select Uninstall. Just click OK when you get the warning then restart your computer. After it restarts, give it 5-10 minutes and restart again. Then check the mode that your controller is in now, it should be Ultra DMA Mode X.

[dancequeen]

THANK YOU!!!!   IH8U

It was just as you said and I did what you said and it's fixed!

Thank you, thank you.  I am happy and so is my husband.

This is th best!!!!!!

Now I know who I can count of for my computer problems, you guys are the best!!!!!!

[RB2tfm]

 Sadly Geek Squad probly would have done the same
and still charged you the $200 ( if they were smart enough to figure that out )
Gald ya got it and nice work IH8U.

[IH8U]

THANK YOU!!!!   IH8U

You're very welcome, happy to help!

nice work IH8U

Thank you!

[Dolphin]

Good morning gentlemen,

After reading this topic, I went and checked my settings for my hard drives (2).

I have the option to either allow the bios to select, or select manually.

The primary channel is set on "allow bios to select" and when checking the transfer speed it comes up and tells me it is "Ultra DMA 6 - Ultra 133" for both hard drives. 

The secondary channel shows the CD Roms (2) are also set to "allow bios to select".  One tests at "Ultra DMA 2 - Ultra 33" and the other tests at "Ultra DMA 4 - Ultra 66."

Questions:

1 - Is there a difference in allowing the bios to select versus making the settings manually?

2 - Should I change the settings manually to show "Ultra DMA 6 - Ultra 133" on the hard drives.

3 - Can (I know I can) but should I change the settings on the CD Roms to "Ultra DMA 6"?  Would any harm come from this?

Whew, bunch of questions for so early in the morning.       Thanks in advance for any assistance.

Ya'll have a great day.....I'm going fishing....

Bill

[IH8U]

1 - Is there a difference in allowing the bios to select versus making the settings manually?

2 - Should I change the settings manually to show "Ultra DMA 6 - Ultra 133" on the hard drives.

3 - Can (I know I can) but should I change the settings on the CD Roms to "Ultra DMA 6"?  Would any harm come from this?

1. Generally no, but Windows can override the bios settings.

2. No, it's fine just the way it is.

3. Again No. The settings were automatically detected to provide the best performance and should be left alone. Also I'm not sure if the transfer mode of per say UDMA 4 can be manually changed to UDMA 6.

[Black Viper]

Generally, the BIOS detects the fastest method to access the hardware by what ever means the particular device reports it is able to use.
Even if it were possible, bumping up the CD drive to a faster data bandwidth transfer rate would not allow the drive to perform faster... it's speed is limited by the physical components/spin rate and transfer speed, not the data bus itself.

[Dolphin]

Thanks guys.  That's kinda what I had figured but wanted some expert advice.

Now ya'll go have a great day.

[tonster]

I might add that in many OEM computers, the data cable provided for the CD/DVD player or recorder is UDMA 33.  They are cheaper or where at the time of the build.  Nowadays, they aren't much cheaper.  This maybe the reason that your CD rom is being accessed in UDMA 33. 
Tony

[bee333]

IH8U!!!!  I have done a system recovery three times because of this issue and have been all over the web looking for the instructions. It took me 2.2 minutes to do what you said this morning after this issue happend AGAIN, YOU ARE AWESOME!!!!!!!!!

[IH8U]

IH8U!!!!  I have done a system recovery three times because of this issue and have been all over the web looking for the instructions. It took me 2.2 minutes to do what you said this morning after this issue happend AGAIN, YOU ARE AWESOME!!!!!!!!!

Thank you!

I don't know why this isn't more common knowledge than what it is. This is a fairly common problem. I run into all the time with Vista, Xp and Win 2000 machines. I discovered this issue when I was running Windows 98SE, in my early days of computing. I had to reformat one time and when I had all the drivers installed, I noticed the start up sound stuttered. It never did before and after searching, forever, through the system I finally realized I hadn't set DMA up for the hard drives. Once I set DMA up the stutter went away. Hopefully this information will catch on and help a lot more people.