Ok, i just bought a dual channel 512mb (pc3200) ddr set, before i bought this my comp ran smoothly, so i installed it and i was getting lots of harddrive lag playing games and running programs (you can hear the hd grinding now and computer skips) i checked bios and had to change my ram settings to pc2700 because my processor's fsb is 333mhz and it still skips so i tried installing old ram to see if this was the problem, still no luck. any suggestions?

System specs:
Athlon XP 2800+ (fsb 333)
A7n8x Asus Deluxe mobo
512mb pc3200 dual channel ddr
3 hd's: SATA 150 160gb ATA133 60gb (windows installed) and ATA 100 15gb
Video card: Gainward Geforce 3 (ti220)

Limits,

You didn't mention if what version of Windows your running. There are a couple things that would come to mind. When you say "grinding" do you mean physically grinding or HD thrashing? Is it possible the system HD is heavily defragged? Also, usually you would want your fastest drive (SATA) as your system drive. Also, I notice you mention that you have two IDE drives one with Windows installed. Are two the HD's sharing and IDE cable as a slave and master? It would be advisable to make the drives each a master on their own IDE channel for best performance. In an ideal world, I would probably install Windows on the SATA drive, and use the other two drives for data as the faster the system drive, the faster the entire system is.

I hope this helps,

Jason

Well im on windows xp pro, i have the ata133 drive on master, the other 15gb is basically not used for the sata has all my backups on it (70 or so gigs worth) .. plus i couldnt figure out how to install windows on the sata because 1)Its not on the windows install screen and 2)It only reads 32gb on fdisk for partitions.. it only shows up in windows when i install the drivers for sata. and yea i tried defragging the drive before.. helped a little but it doesnt seem like this would be a buildup related problem because it had just been working fine, i was thinking you had to format when you installed new ram? but i dunno..

Limits,

OK. When you do a "clean" install Windows XP from either a retail or OEM disk, you would boot from the Windows CD to install. One of the first questions that comes up is Hit F6 to install additional drivers. You would hit F6. Further on in the installation it will ask for you to put a floppy in (with your SATA driver) and it can then get a driver to install on your SATA drive. If you didn't do this, your SATA drive will not show up as a drive to install Windows. Also, you say your ATA133 is set to master, but is it on its own IDE cord/channel? If it is sharing a cable/channel with your other HD that is probably what is causing your problem. Windows does not like two drives on one IDE channel even though people do it all the time. Everyone of my systems has each device on its own channel and never in a slave master situation. What I would do is move your backups to one of the other drives and do a clean install of XP on the SATA drive.

Hope this helps,

Jason

alternatively, you could move the virtual memory file (pagefile.sys) to your SATA hdd as that would make the VM quicker... and then I'd recommend doing a defrag on the windows drive...

edit: but this is no real alternative for the performance you'd get with windows installed on the SATA imo

What about going backwards for a while. What happens when you put this ram out ? Does the lag go away ? If it doesn't then you have proved that you are looking directly at a drive problem and not ram.

Les