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high Hard pagefault resolution time


Woomera

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since this is a laptop doing the swapping stuff would be hard unless i ask a friend to lend me his/her laptop ....

Oh, a Laptop. My bad. Sorry for all the previous SATA ideas. Well a laptop makes data/power cable swapping impossible, but you should still have a spare HDD connector in there for a 2nd drive and this would still be a worthwhile test (swapping connectors). After moving the HDD to the other connector you should doublecheck in the BIOS that it is recognized and can boot from that connector, etc. If after testing the HDD on the alternate connector the lags disappear then you can just leave it there and be done with it and chalk it up to that connector or the controller failing. But if they still occur ...

Look for a heat problem. What I always do with slow or flakey laptops is take off all the removable covers on the bottom, blow out any dust with compressed air (side vents too) and then place the laptop on a really good super fan/cooler to greatly increase the airflow and then test (I mean a good laptop cooler, there should be a lot of air moving or else it is a waste of time). This is the number one problem with laptops - heat. If the lags do not return then you got your problem nailed and you must work on a permanent airflow solution. If the lags do return even with the greatly increased airflow ...

Next idea would be to get another HDD and clone the existing disk and its working OS (two connectors necessary obviously), pull the old drive, leave in the new (cloned) drive and boot and test. If the lags are gone, it is certain that the old HDD is unreliable (in fact, you may discover this during cloning process) and you can just shelve it and keep using the new cloned disk. But if the lags do return you can safely rule out the original HDD as the problem (plus you get a spare HDD which is not a bad thing) and have most likely narrowed it down to the OS (or other software and drivers) which carried forth to the new HDD when the OS was cloned. So ...

As a proof, I would simply clean install Windows on the new HDD (wipe out the cloned OS). If this new installation is lag-free, then you know for a fact it is the OS (or other software) generated. You could now run the old one (by itself, swap it back in, pull the new one) with the original Windows install to try to nail down the definite OS or software glitch at your leisure. Recap: new drive has working new OS, old drive has old problem OS. I would make a point of exporting the registry on the old one and backing up all shortcuts, apps, data and copying it to the new one (but do not import this complete exported registry, ever!). You could even try the Windows Easy Transfer thingie (which I have never used so I cannot speak about it) or some other migration tool.

I would then finally place the new drive as C: add the old drive as a D: (check that BIOS boots from new HDD!) and copy whatever needs to copied to the working new drive. You can leave D: as a spare in there, format it, etc, but it is better to just yank it out and leave it on the shelf as a fallback, because even brand new drives can die suddenly.

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i checked and there's no extra connector and getting a new HDD for testing is almost impossible since the guy im getting the HDD from shouldnt be needing any of the data on the drive (ill check though).

as for Heat as i mentioned in the first post (if i have :) ) i have checked and there's no issue.

so at this point i think i have to just buy a new HDD and see IF it was the problem!?

but is there anyway to test cpu and mainboard and see if any of them is the problem?

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Please post the link to manufacturer page for the exact Acer laptop (no time to search right now).

Oh, presumably you have a PDF of the exact manual, are you certain there are no built-in diagnostics? They are usually on a small hidden FAT partition accessible through F-keys at bootup similar to BIOS access.

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i could not find any official Toshiba diag tool that supports SATA drives.

I believe there are, and SATA is definitely included if the Toshiba site is accurate ...

Toshiba - Hard Drives - Software Utilities

The 1st one is Windows ready.

The 2nd one listed there is a DOS diagnostic so it requires you to create a DOS boot disk and they do not seem to have a pre-configured ISO to burn (which sucks because it is the only way to eliminate Windows as a variable).

The 3rd is SCSI so just ignore.

Read through this thread at SevenForums for some ideas. One person recommends using the Hitachi Drive Fitness Tool.

I'll look around later and see if someone made a custom ISO for a bootable disc later. This thread has reminded me to update my own boot CD's with more current diags since all the HDD company consolidation (thanks a lot ! more stuff to do :realmad: ).

EDIT: Here is the direct download for the Hitachi DFT v4.16 (Drive Fitness Tool ) in an ISO for a bootable CD to test this disk drive ...

https://www1.hgst.com/hdd/support/downloads/dft32_v416_b00.iso

Edited by CharlotteTheHarlot
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ok guys, so yesterday i was really frustrated and went my guts and bought a new HDD and inserted, formatted and installed a fresh windows and then all my drivers. and guess what, the prblem is gone and my computer feels 20X faster.

what still bothers me though and from the numbers and tests i couldnt pinpoint the exact issue for sure.

anyway thank you all for your help and input's. really appreciate it.

Regards

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ok guys, so yesterday i was really frustrated and went my guts and bought a new HDD and inserted, formatted and installed a fresh windows and then all my drivers. and guess what, the prblem is gone and my computer feels 20X faster.

what still bothers me though and from the numbers and tests i couldnt pinpoint the exact issue for sure.

anyway thank you all for your help and input's. really appreciate it.

Regards

I was fairly sure the disk was root of the problem because I saw similar symptoms tens of times in past: weird system "lags" and temporary freezes, unresponsive programs without any obvious reason, constant hdd activity. That's what bad or reallocated sectors do. Usually just one is enough to RMA a disk, btw (or I am lucky to buy from really got stores).

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ok guys, so yesterday i was really frustrated and went my guts and bought a new HDD and inserted, formatted and installed a fresh windows and then all my drivers. and guess what, the prblem is gone and my computer feels 20X faster.

what still bothers me though and from the numbers and tests i couldnt pinpoint the exact issue for sure.

anyway thank you all for your help and input's. really appreciate it.

Regards

You can always put the disk back in and run the bootable CD diags (link is in my previous post) and/or continue pursuing the Windows misconfiguration.

Alternatively if you have the means, using an adapter (2.5" to SATA) you can connect that disk to another computer as an auxillary drive and run a full battery of tests (bootable CD HDD diags or Windows based utilities).

You shouldn't be bothered by not determining the root cause because when you did the full install of Windows to a new HDD you effectively performed two solutions at once, consequently neither the hardware (failing HDD) or software (OS or other) can be pinpointed.

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