[Misc] SP2, slow disk access, XP's fault

[zberetz]

Hello there, please help me figure this one out.

Context:

Windows XP SP2 +AVG free, +Kerio Personal FireWall, +Spybot, +AdAware, all behind very decent hardware firewall. AMD Athlon 1800, 512MB RAM, 200GB disk. System maintained under very strict discipline

Disk performance is absurdly slow. 100 MB copy paste could take like 20 minutes or so.

THE CATCH:

the same disk, in the very same computer, accessed from another XP installation, works just "fine" - normal performance.

Any ideias beyond the obvious (malware, drivers, updates, etc; all tried already) would be appretiated.

Thanks a lot.

Z

[cluberti]

A simple way to look would be to run filemon on both machines, doing the same operation, and compare logs.

[LLXX]

Is DMA mode enabled for the hard drive? Check its properties in the Device Manager.

[cluberti]

If the machines are identical (and let's assume they are), it's going to be an issue with a file system filter (FSF) driver misbehaving and hammering the disk during file I/O (that's really the only time we use them, unless they're actively used by an application). The reason I believe this is because all I/O on a machine has to go through all FSF drivers on the system (regardless of whether or not they have anything to do with the file transfer), as that's the way the kernel is designed (and that's how antivirus/antispyware/backup software works). This will likely show up as the antivirus or antispyware package, but I've seen blackice and zonealarm do this on occasion too.