HDD stalling problem.
Morbid
This is a weird and annoying problem. Under Win95 OSR2 and regular,
I get a strange stalling action. The drives would seem to copy data,
and when time comes to copy large files (anything over 1MB I consider
large) the HDD/s seem to stall part way through the copy of the large
file, the HDD light stays lit, the HDD seems to stall, and the whole
system seems like it just froze. Then a few seconds later, the drives
involved seem to 'resynch' and continue to copy for a few more seconds
until the process repeats.
I have a P2 266 on an ASUS P2L97 M/B, not overclocked, HDD Block mode
is turned off in the BIOS. The drives are IBM DAQA-33240 (3.2GB), and
its 4.3GB brother. I also run the default win95 drivers, with the
ASUS PX4 patch installed.
This problem existed only with the 3.2GB drive a long time ago, when I
got the new 4.3GB, I copied everything from the 3.2GB to it, and under
windows reformatted the 3.2GB, and the problem seemed to have gone
away. The problem did not surface again until recently both drives
began to exhibit this problem.
I hadn't had any 'crashes' or any loss of data, just this annoying
stalling.
Another interesting piece of info, is that this doesn't happen under
real mode DOS (xcopy), or under the win95 DOS box (xcopy32).
If you have had this problem b4 and have found a fix, or have any
possible thoughts, explanations, suggestions, please let me know,
since I don't have the luxury of reformatting both of the drives,
as they are full to the brim, and since this problem will surface
again, as it did just recently.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
-Morbid
gpe...@home.com
Phil Leonard
>This is a weird and annoying problem. Under Win95 OSR2 and regular,
>I get a strange stalling action. The drives would seem to copy data,
>and when time comes to copy large files (anything over 1MB I consider
>large) the HDD/s seem to stall part way through the copy of the large
>file, the HDD light stays lit, the HDD seems to stall, and the whole
>system seems like it just froze.
Does the system have a network card? If so, remove the TCP/IP binding to your
network card if you are not connected to NT.
Morbid
As a matter of fact, I do have a NIC and I do have TCP/IP bound to it,
however I can't remove that binding since I have my cablemodem connected
using the NIC. I will try disconnecting just for the hell of it, but
I don't see how this could cause HDD's to stall.
Any ideas?
-Morbid
gpe...@home.com
Phil Leonard
>As a matter of fact, I do have a NIC and I do have TCP/IP bound to it,
>however I can't remove that binding since I have my cablemodem connected
>using the NIC. I will try disconnecting just for the hell of it, but
>I don't see how this could cause HDD's to stall.
Because windows 95 constantly polls for an NT server address:
-------------------
TCP/IP & System Pauses:
If you are using TCP/IP for WAN connections but it is bound to both LAN and
PPP adapter but no DHCP server is present on the LAN, your system may pause
for a couple of seconds every once in a while. To avoid this, unbind TCP/IP
from your LAN adapter by bringing up properties of LAN adapter in the Net
control panel and unchecking TCP/IP in the bindings property sheet.
Contributed by James Blackwell, PSS Support Engineer
If Microsoft TCP/IP is configured to obtain an IP address from a DHCP server
when a DHCP server is not available on the network, the next time Windows 95
starts, an error message announces that the DHCP client could not obtain an IP
address. To solve this problem, use the procedure described in the following
section to configure TCP/IP manually.
Note If you have a netcard already installed in Network Setup and do not
have TCP/IP bound to it, you will need to unbind TCP/IP from that netcard
after you install TCP/IP for use with the Dial-Up Adapter. Highlight the
netcard and hit "Properties". Click on the "Bindings" tab. Then uncheck the
TCP/IP box.
Steve Christall
On Mon, 16 Feb 1998 23:32:14 -0800, Morbid <gpe...@home.com> wrote:
>This is a weird and annoying problem. Under Win95 OSR2 and regular,
>I get a strange stalling action. The drives would seem to copy data,
>and when time comes to copy large files (anything over 1MB I consider
>large) the HDD/s seem to stall part way through the copy of the large
>file, the HDD light stays lit, the HDD seems to stall, and the whole
>system seems like it just froze. Then a few seconds later, the drives
>involved seem to 'resynch' and continue to copy for a few more seconds
>until the process repeats.
>
I also have had this problem on and off. My symptoms were copying a
large file between partitions on my IBM Deskstar5. eg copying a 200MB
file would start OK, and then the harddrive would begin to grind, and
WIndows time to copy increases rapidly to 35mins. Am running an Asus
T2P4. It is not occurring at the moment, however I have recently
rebuilt Win95 yet again. One friend suggested that the harddrive was
on its way out, the grinding caused by it continually recalibrating,
however in dos the problem does not occur. Have the same drive at
home, but the problem has never occurred here.
I have a windows NT network with DHCP and Wins servers running so I
doubt TCP has anything to do with it. I am making a wild guess at
something to do with DMA conflicts .. something to cause it to try
over and over again for the same bit of data ... perhaps a memory
overlap with a network card? I don't know ... it works OK at the
moment but it is bloody annoying when it happens.
Is your board UDMA capable or Mode4 ... it is interesting that we both
have IBM harddrives. Do you have DMA checked?
Sorry I can't help you solve the problem
Steve
Morbid
What you're describing isn't my problem tho. There aren't any system
pauses that happen 'once in a while', only when a hard disk is being
written to. Also I have a dedicated IP, I don't use DHCP or WAN.
I see this as an HDD specific problem.
For example: if I force the HDDs to be Mode 0 DMA 0, the problem is
nonexistant. But that makes them slow. I have also noticed that if
i don't load the 32 bit drivers for the HDD's controller in win95, the
problem disappears. I have tried reinstalling the patch for PX4, i've
tried to reinstall the win95 drivers, but none of these result in
a solution. What seems to be happening, is that when large blocks of
data are being written to the HDD's they encounter logical errors,
'go off track' if you will. They pause, then they 'get back on track'
and continue to write data until they 'go off track' again.
Any other suggestions?
-Morbid
gpe...@home.com
Morbid
You should give your self a bit more credit then that, those are
interesting suggestions you make, i'll look into DMA conflicts, shuffle
some hardware....
The 440LX chipset which the P2L97 board is build around, is UDMA capable
but my HDD's are only Mode 4/DMA 2, and yes i do have dma checked.
Thanks for giving me some ideas.
-Morbid
gpe...@home.com
Client Manager
HI
Have a look at mikrosoft knowledgebase article Q171353
Computer with ultra DMA IDE controller may hang
http://premium.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/q171/3/53.asp
/Flemming
Morbid wrote in message <34EAB7A6...@home.com>...
Paul S Secinaro
Morbid <gpe...@home.com> writes:
>This is a weird and annoying problem. Under Win95 OSR2 and regular,
>I get a strange stalling action. The drives would seem to copy data,
>and when time comes to copy large files (anything over 1MB I consider
>large) the HDD/s seem to stall part way through the copy of the large
>file, the HDD light stays lit, the HDD seems to stall, and the whole
>system seems like it just froze. Then a few seconds later, the drives
>involved seem to 'resynch' and continue to copy for a few more seconds
>until the process repeats.
>I have a P2 266 on an ASUS P2L97 M/B, not overclocked, HDD Block mode
>is turned off in the BIOS. The drives are IBM DAQA-33240 (3.2GB), and
>its 4.3GB brother. I also run the default win95 drivers, with the
>ASUS PX4 patch installed.
>This problem existed only with the 3.2GB drive a long time ago, when I
>got the new 4.3GB, I copied everything from the 3.2GB to it, and under
>windows reformatted the 3.2GB, and the problem seemed to have gone
>away. The problem did not surface again until recently both drives
>began to exhibit this problem.
>I hadn't had any 'crashes' or any loss of data, just this annoying
>stalling.
I have also seen this problem with my IBM 3.2GB (I think it's the same
model -- it's a mode 4 Deskstar 3 drive). I used to have a Dell P133
system (Intel FX chipset). I had the IBM drive and a Seagate ST32140
hooked to the same controller. Under OSR2, with DMA turned on, I
would get the stalling behavior you mention when copying large amounts
of data between the drives. Everything would work fine for the first
couple of hundred meg of data, and then it would start stalling. The
problem would go away when I turned DMA off on both drives.
My current system uses an Abit AX5 motherboard (TX chipset), and the
Intel Busmastering drivers v3.01. I still have the IBM drive, but the
Seagate has been replaced by a Fujitsu 2.6GB UDMA. The two drives are
on separate IDE controllers and are each the only device on their
respective controllers. The only common thread between the two
systems is the IBM drive. Hmm...
Paul
Morbid
Problems solved. (sortof)
It seems that the problem is solved by unchecking the DMA boxes under
the HDD properties. However this means that the CPU will be more
utilized without bus masaring. I will see how much bus mastering
reduces utilization of the CPU. (As I imagine not by too much, since
testes I ran a while ago with other hardware showed only 3-5% less
utilization with busmastering turned on)
What this problem seems to point to is either the drivers, the HDD's,
or the controller which is built into the chipset, on the hardware
level. Hopefully its the former. I will try to reinstall win95, and
see if the problem persists, if it does, it is vary likely, the
controller/chipset was damaged in some way, maybe heat problems, or the
fact that for a time I oc'd my system bus to 83 MHz. :/
-Morbid
gpe...@home.com
Morbid wrote:
>
> This is a weird and annoying problem. Under Win95 OSR2 and regular,
> I get a strange stalling action. The drives would seem to copy data,
> and when time comes to copy large files (anything over 1MB I consider
> large) the HDD/s seem to stall part way through the copy of the large
> file, the HDD light stays lit, the HDD seems to stall, and the whole
> system seems like it just froze. Then a few seconds later, the drives
> involved seem to 'resynch' and continue to copy for a few more seconds
> until the process repeats.
>
> I have a P2 266 on an ASUS P2L97 M/B, not overclocked, HDD Block mode
> is turned off in the BIOS. The drives are IBM DAQA-33240 (3.2GB), and
> its 4.3GB brother. I also run the default win95 drivers, with the
> ASUS PX4 patch installed.
>
> This problem existed only with the 3.2GB drive a long time ago, when I
> got the new 4.3GB, I copied everything from the 3.2GB to it, and under
> windows reformatted the 3.2GB, and the problem seemed to have gone
> away. The problem did not surface again until recently both drives
> began to exhibit this problem.
>
> I hadn't had any 'crashes' or any loss of data, just this annoying
> stalling.
>
Morbid
Could be true, but I distinctly remember having the same or similar
problem with my ST51080A (1GB) Seagate. This problem is likely to be
more sensitive to the IBM drives, but not solely existing on IBM
drives.
-Morbid
gpe...@home.com
Ed Jay wrote:
>
> I've been reading on the NT newsgroup about this stalling problem. So
> far, there's a distinct corellation (100%) between the use of IBM drives
> and the existance of the problem.
>
> Ed
> Remove the X to reply.