Finally Computer Problem Resolved, atleast I guess so

My computer has been running slow for the past 1 week, to be exact since 19th Oct. And, now I seem to have resolve it.

The problem started last friday, i.e. 19th October, when it ran very slow, and made me worried. At that time, i thought may be a restart will solve the problem, but when I restarted it, it took a hell lot of time to start, I remember, it took me around 20 min to start at that time. I was supposed to leave for Dublin, so I just shut it down, and forgot about the issue. But, then again on monday, it was running slow. I didnt have enough time during work week to figure out the problem so I thought will handle this rogue on the coming week. Ha Ha Ha, Date with the Rogue.

Also, during this week, i also noticed a click sound, which was coming from the hard-drive, I thought, man hard-disk is gone now, and it really pissed me off, as I have already lost one of my hard-disk and lot of important data with it. First think, I did was to take the back up of photographs that I have taken over the past 5 years, and then some important project files. I googled on the net, and learn that it is a known problem with DELL laptop. But I also came across one solution which recommended to change the power properties to let go off the problem of click noise with the hard disk. I tried but it didnt work.

Finally, I thought of nailing down this problem today. The first thing, that I generally do, whenever I observe my system slow, is to check task manager, if it can tell me which process is eating so much of cpu and making the computer run slow. Well, task manager was showing 99% CPU utilization. And I have enough RAM of 3gb, so i was sure it is not memory problem. Then I thought, may be there is some virus or trojan running in the background, smart enough to eat all of my CPU utilization but not showing up in the task manager. I tried a whole bunch of antivirus, malware remover, and all such stuff but to no relief. Then I downloaded 2 utilities process explorer and sea tools.

Process Explorer gives a more detailed view of task manager and sea tools does some test on the hard drive. Executing Process Explorer revealed the real problem but not complete. It showed that some hardware interrupt are eating up 50% of CPU. So, this means there is some problem with the hardware. Sea Tools passed all the test on my hard-drive which means, hard drive is possibly fine.

Further googling about hardware interrupt eating up 50% of CPU resources, revealed 2 solutions

1. Go To Bios set up and disabled PCI IDE bus master – I personally did not like this options, so just left it

2. Go To Device Manager -> IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers -> Primary or Secondary IDE Channel -> Properties -> Advanced Settings.

Check out the Current Transfer Mode field,  if it’s PIO, man you have solved your problem, if it ‘s not, then it is some other problem.  Uninstall the driver, restart the system and windows will automatically install the driven on restart and bingo, works fine now.

Well, in my case, it was PIO problem, I dont care  a shit what is PIO, it should be DMA. I do know about DMA which I read in my OS classes, it is supposed to handle interrupts related to memory and release hard disk from doing so, Well  i guess, its reasonable to choose DMA option  then.

Happy now, to resolve the problem which was pissing me off for quiet a long time. Hope it helps others also.

Hard disk making click sound

I have this Dell Latitude D830, and for the past few days, hard disk makes some kind of click sound. The kind of sound that appears when one dock-in the laptop to a docking station. Moreover, the appearance of click sound also freezes the system for a moment.

Well, I read a couple of post on this issue, and finally came to the conclusion that this is a known issue with dell laptops and the problem is with the hard disk for sure. The sound is because of the spindle arm resting to the left. It goes for a rest and makes a sound. The solution is replace the hardisk

Well, I just thought when did this problem started. It started on the evening I was supposed to leave for dublin i.e. 19th Sep. So what is that I did on that day that can make my laptop cry out. As far as I remember I changed the power settings. Now, I have reverted back the power settings, lets see what happens now. But this problem has already spoiled quite a few days.

The moral of the story is, I am not happy with the quality of dell laptop. I have been using samsung laptop before, and they work so good.