Win XP stutters on startup

[opfor]

Hi,
I recently purchased a G.skill FM-25S2S-128GB from newegg. Overall this drive gets me to the windows login screen faster but after that its allot slower than my old 10k RPM HDD while it starts up windows services. If I try and run an application within 2 minutes of logging on, the machine stutters and bogs down. The only optimization of WinXp for the new SSD is moving the page file to the 500gb samsung hdd. I know that there are other tweaks for XP to make it run smoother but you guys dont provide any documentation or guides on the subject. Is it possible that you could could post some guides on optimization of winxp, Vista, and SSD Do's and Dont's??


My system specs are:
WinXP SP2 (latest rev.)
G.Skill 128gb SSD (as primary OS & application drive)
Samsung 500gb (media/document drive)
DFI Lanpart SLI UT NF4 Mobo
AMD athlon fx-60 @ 2.6ghz
2 gb Mushkin Ram
EVGA 8800gts 640
Soundblaster Live

thanks

op4

[recyclebin]

I have the same experience as you!

[G.SKILL]

we'll set up similar platform to try out soon
thanks


G.S

[opfor]

Ive been doing some research elsewhere (obviously) and I will be trying out some suggested tips and tricks. I really wish that some documentation and utilities had been included with the actual SSD so that I wouldn't be going back to align partitions, etc.

@G.Skill tech

I look forward to hearing about your experience and solutions. Just to be clear I am running WinXP SP2 32-bit and my page file is not on the SSD.


Thanks

-op4

P.S. - I will post any fixes and tips I find worthwhile.

[opfor]

well i started the disk alignment process as described on other forums. But when i was in diskpart and entered list partition it said my ssd partition was already offset to 32kb So i dunno where to go from there? Every time i image my hdd/ssd i have to activate allot of programs so its not something i do readily. It would really be nice if a Gskill rep/tech would address this issue since i cant ask questions on the other forum about G.skill products and this is a non returnable product.

-op4


Did a bit more reading in another guide and it seems to be giving me the desire results... more soon

[opfor]

Ok so i
- used drivesnapshot to create an image

- deleted all the partitions on the SSD

- used Diskpar to create new partitions with the correct paremeters

- formatted the newly partitioned SSD with Disk Manager (ntfs 4096 allocation)

- used drivesnapshot to restore the image to the formatted SSD (and didnt get any error msgs about resizing partitions)


rebooted, used the boot menu to select the SSD and got an error MSG "error loading operating system". I went into the bios and disabled the channel the backup HDD was on to eliminate any chance of conflicts between the 2 OS drives but I get the same error. Any Ideas G.skill???


-op4

[opfor]

Ok after a bit more searching I have found that Nforce4 boards dont have AHCI to disable in the bios. Someone suggested using the Siil1334 RAID controller to run the SSD so im gonna try that next as its a simple cable swap.

-op4



update:

still a no go I get the "error loading operating system" message when i try and run it as a sata disk on the siil3114. I checked and Ive got the latest Siil3114 drivers loaded. When I try and run it on the nf4 sata 1 channel i get a disk read error. I hope this drive isnt toasted already.............

[opfor]

I pulled the SSD this morning and dropped my raptor back in. From what it seems this SSD wont run on the Nf4 chipset with out stuttering.

I just wanna play some video games not screw around with aligning partitions..


-op4

[G.SKILL]

ok...
thanks for sharing this info
and sorry for the incompatibility


G.S

[ewitte]

You mentioned to me you used a clone program for the drive. If you have an offset of 63 which most of these programs set you WILL get stutter. There is only one SSD drive out there that detects a bad offset and makes corrections.

[opfor]

I used both Acronis and Drivesnapshot. Acronis was able to clone the drive but always erases any existing partitions on the disk (so if i created a properly aligned partition with diskpar, Acronis would wipe it before cloning) so the OS will work but stutter. With Drivesnapshot (which I had never used before) the imaging of the drive went smoothly and didnt give me any error messages (during cloning) but would not start up when rebooted.

Funny thing though is when I used diskpar to check the partition of the SSD after cloneing by Acronis it said the offset was 32kb, which was supposedly the correct offset.


The simple fact that Gskill doesnt Know what their product is compatible with and has left it up to me is wrong especially on an Item that is non returnable.

-op4

[MassiveOverkill]

With Acronis you cannot clone the drive (I know it's a PITA). You have to make an image backup and then restore that image backup to your pre-formatted (and correctly offset-partitioned) drive. You should have the option of not overwriting. You may have to do the Active partition and then the MBR in back-to-back operations, but it is doable, and it's how I did my drive when I was testing.

[opfor]

I used acronis home image 10.0 Clone disk in manual it never gave me the option to not erase the existing partition (created with diskpar).

I also used drivesnapshot on 2 different occasions over the past weekend and both times the images restored correctly without reporting an error. WinXP would fail to boot reporting "error loading operating system" when I did everything in the OCZ guide to the T.

Which is another really pathetic thing about this whole saga, that I should have to go to the competitors website to get any sort of guidance or explanation on this damn thing. Anyway Im back on my Raptor and done with this lil experiment. I will think twice before I get any Gskill products in the future.

-op4

[MassiveOverkill]

You CANNOT CLONE DISK. Make an image backup, then restore that backup to disk. There are two restorations you have to do, your primary active partition and then your Master Boot Record.

OK, it seems that if you had your image with the proper offset to begin with, then Acronis will maintain it, but if your image doesn't have the proper offset, then there is no way, using Acronis to get the proper offset.

What you can do is restore your partition using drivesnapshot and then do a repair MBR using your original Windows CD, which should hopefully rebuild your MBR.

[opfor]

I used mbrwiz to try and repair it MBRwiz reports that the MBR is repaired succesfully but it still gives an error. The drive shows up as healthy in the disk manager..

-op4