Strange Problem! long post.

[unstuck2]

Hi all,
this is more a general PC problem than a DVD thing, but maybe you can come up with a diagnosis for me, because I am stuck!
I've been capturing a lot of DV and 8mm tape to AVI's then useing TMPGenc to generate m2v and wav files and finally authouring and burning to DVDR. After all the work I decided I should keep the m2v/wav files as backups "just incase". Anyway so I needed more space and bought a 200GB WesternDigital 7200RPM drive with 8MB cache for 60c/MB after rebate
On some advice, when I replaced my smaller D drive with this drive (which went well enough) here's what I did:
made a 2GB partition, called it Z Drive and assigned it for swap files only.
Then I used the rest of the HD as one partion for my D drive.
So far I've moved 100GB of m2v/wav files, mp3 files, jpg and TIFF files inot this drive without any porblems. Spot checking a few files opened fine.

Here's the concerns:

I might be imagining it, but the PC seems to run slower now (?)
The little "flash light" searching thing comes up when I open "my computer" for the first time. It never used to.

Also, and here's the real issue, when I capture AVI files from my DV (through firewire) I cannot successfully capture to this drive!
It either freezes up after the first couple of minutes, or gives an avi file that's unreadable. I've tried different capture software with the same result. The resulting AVI file canot be opened, Media player or TMPGenc give an error saying "wrong file format"!! Whats worse, the avi cannot even be moved to the C drive using explorer with out freezing the application!
The very same piece of video captured using the same method to the C drive with the same software works fine. I don't think its a capture issue, because previously I could capture to the old D drive (smaller capacity) just fine. I really don't understand this at all. Could it be that having the swapfiles mapped to the same drive (although a different partition) is causing a problem? Do you think something maybe wrong with my new HD?
I am running a P4 2.66GHz (OC to 2.9) WinXP SP1 and 1GB RAM
This doesn't make any sense even as I write it.
Please let me know if mor einformation would help. Also how I might go about diagnosing the problem.
thanks

[Luddite]

try letting xp assign the drive letter
big partitions aint the fastest

[dcsos]

If you think its a hardware problem
1. How did you jumper the new hardrive (USE CABLE SELECT)
2. Did WINXP assign ULTRA DMA to your drive (IT SHOULD SAY UDMA 5)
3. Are there other peripherals on the ide connector?

[turk690]

Try not to put swap files there; rather, on the OS drive (C. If you are using an Intel chipset (845xxx, 850xxx, etc.) installation of Intel Acceleration Application (IAA, or any of its derivatives) is a must. It "streamlines" ATAPI operation, such as letting each device (master & slave) on an IDE bus operate the fastest it can. Normally, when, for example, an ATA-133 HDD and a UDMA-33 HDD are put on the same bus, data transfer between the two devices and the rest of the system is as fast as the slower of the two. IAA overrides this limitation, among others.

[unstuck2]

thanks for the responses.
here's what I know:
my c drive is the same kind of drive (7200rpm, 8mb cache, ata100) just smaller and is jumper set to Master.
The new D drive is jumper set to Slave.
There are no other devices on this IDE controller.

Previous to the installation of the new drive my swap files were set to the C drive, but I was told that moving them to the second HD would increase performance, and also moving them to their own dedicated partition would reduce the need for defragmenting the disks.

The Intel Application Accelerator was installed when I first put this PC together (ie before the second HD replacement)

I am not sure if WINXP assign ULTRA DMA to your drive (IT SHOULD SAY UDMA 5). I'll look into that tonight.

Finally, I tried something new last night:
reset the swapfiles to the C drive and windows managed option.
Tried capturing 20 sec dV to AVI to the D drive: same problems, bad file!
Capturing same 20 seconds, with same mehtod to C drive: No problems!

Copy the avi file from C drive to D drive and tried playing from the D drive: file opens, but there is a a lot of distortion and interference both in the video and audio! There's definately something wrong. However, it's curious why I haven't seen any thing wrong with all the mp3s and jpgs?!

Does this new information help any? I'm thinking of pulling this new drive out!

[nkuperw]

A couple of questions. First, when you installed the new drive, did you format it and if so, what kind of file type?

Secondly, I don't know exactly why it happens for certain drives, but i've found that the registry will get a bit mucked when it comes to avi and you may need to do a regedit to fix it. I found the address for it on one of these forums..you'll need to search for it, but it clears any avi problems you may have.

Lastly, in XP go under administrative tools and under computer management and disk management and all your drives should be NTSF basic.

I hope some of this helps

good luck

[unstuck2]

oh that sounds encouraging!
I would be very happy if the issue was just avi related and not a general disk issue and if a simple registry change would fix it! I'll search the site but if you could remember any details about the info (or identifiers for the link) I'd sure appreciate it.
To answer your question, I did the partitioning and formatting for the drive from within XP using NTFS. It took a good 40 minuntes to get it done, and in all other respects this drive is behaving properly.

I'll look for the regedit information you mentioned.
thanks

[nkuperw]

Hi, I found some of the regedit stuff, but it's more for deleting avi's than anything else...but here they are anyways:

Delete folder "InProcServer32" from Registry key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\CLSID\{87D62D9 4-71B3-4b9a-9489-5FE6850DC73E}\InProcServer32


this is the one I used and it worked fine for what I needed to do.


Another one I found but did not use is:


HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\SystemFileAssociations\.avi\shel lex\PropertyHandler
Then delete the value in it.

Good luck.

[unstuck2]

thanks,
I've been searching the site too and not found anything.
I am not sure what these registry entries you've listed are/do. How do you think they would help the avi issue with this particular drive? remember the avis run fine on my system as long as they are on the C drive.
Any ideas?

[Gazorgan]

I think I see the problem. You replaced your old drive. I bet XP is still stuck in PIO mode for your new drive. If you had an old/slow drive or a cdrom attached to that port, then it won't change itself. What you need to do is delete the drive controllers in Device manager and re-boot. Windows will re-detect them, and should pick up the DMA mode without any problems.

This happens when you replace your old 16x CDRW drive with a 4x DVDR burner and it only gives you 1x speed :P

[unstuck2]

what is PIO mode?

what this drive replaced was a very similar drive (7200rpm UATA Maxtor with 8MB cache) only smaller at 85GB. Would your concern still apply?

I can't remember how it went exactly, but after booting XP after the installation, I went to disk management and the new drive was there ready to be partitioned and formatted. Nothing "strange" (errors etc) happened during install.

thanks

[TechieMan]

Did you say you have the drives on the same IDE channel? If so...MOVE the new one to the second IDE channel.

Should help...

[unstuck2]

the second IDE controller is taken with a DVDRW (master) and DVD-Rom (slave)

[TechieMan]

Make DVD-ROM slave on the first channel and put the HDD on the secondary IDE...I think you may be getting bottlenecked on the same IDE channel.