hard disk / cpu issue

[|Leviathan|]

a friend of mine has a Dell M70 laptop

these last 4 days he witnessed a degraded performance on his pc and we finally concluded that the problem most probably was the hard drive

the problem actually is that sometimes the computer freezes for a couples of seconds, as if it pauses untill everything is written on disk

we ran HD Tach v3 and the throughput result was of an average of 2mb/s

according to S.M.A.R.T everything is working just fine

we noticed another thing, while benchmarking the system with HD Tach, Both CPU's and the relevant Kernels were 100% usage

the disk is freshly defragmented
asap i'll post the laptop details regarding components and the exact model of the hard disk, what i'm sure about is taht its a toshiba
another factor to consider is that this pc is only about 6 months old

thanks in advance

 

[unhappy_mage]

Is the disk in DMA mode? Start->run->compmgmt.msc->device manager->IDE/atapi controllers->the one the disk is on->properties->"advanced settings" tab->"current transfer mode"

Is this a sata disk or IDE? IDE will have a lot of little tiny pins on it, no idea what laptop sata looks like.

 

[mwarps]

Are you saying that both CPUs were at 100% usage and both were all kernel? you wouldn't be able to use the machine if this were the case. get rid of spyware/crapware/adware/etc, and then see if it helps.

 

[|Leviathan|]

Are you saying that both CPUs were at 100% usage and both were all kernel? you wouldn't be able to use the machine if this were the case. get rid of spyware/crapware/adware/etc, and then see if it helps.

infact it is quite unusable witha pause of aprox 3second after each click, even a single selection of an icon

of course, done with 3 antispyware programs
check for viruses with mc afee enterprise and stinger
and clena registry with regscrupxp

yet the problem still remains

 

[|Leviathan|]

Ok As promised i got a little bit the detailed specifactions of the laptop

Dell Precision M70
Intel Pentium M 2.13Ghz
Instructions MMX, SSE, SSE2

HD: Toshiba MK8026GAX

re: unhappy_mage; i just sent an email to him to check if its on DMA mode, in case it is or it isnt, what do you suggest?

*Edit* : Spec Sheet For Hard Disk Drive

 

[|Leviathan|]

'Delayed Write Fail' any idea on what this means / and whats the cause / solution?

 

[draksia]

'Delayed Write Fail' any idea on what this means / and whats the cause / solution?

That means a write command was issued to the drive but it never ackownledge that the write was complete.

It sounds to me like the hard drive is failing. I would get everything off it that is needed and then RMA to dell.

 

[|Leviathan|]

He ran the Dell diagnostics software and it failed the hard disk read test with error code 0F00:0244 and the confidence test with error code 2F0F:1344. Chkdsk shows 100kb in bad sectors. Also the IDE driver has changed to PIO mode

*waves goodbye to hard disk*

 

[hmz]

I just built new system and have exactly the same problem. When going from one folder to another, sometimes it pauses for like 2sec.. I have SATA drives. Any ideas?