They said it would be slow



  • Okay, so this one takes a shot at me, but think it's kinda funny.

     I have been building and troubleshooting PC since about 1986 (we had an 8088 home built clone back then.)  Anyway, it was a couple years after XP came out, I had gotten a bonus from work so I decided to upgrade my windows 95 PC.  I bought a new HDD, new motherboard and a copy of XP.  I pulled out the motherboard, put in the new one, and connected the CD Rom and HDD.  I put the XP CD in the drive and booted the PC.

     Right away, it finds the XP CD and starts booting into the install.  I went through all the normal blue screen steps of XP, set up my partitions etc. And watched it started copying the files.  It said something like 20% done. So I got up and went and did some other stuff for about 20 minutes and came back.  It still said 20%.  So I watched it a little bit and the progress never moved.  I went and did some other things came back about an hour later, still 20%.  I ended up going to bed about 2 or 3 hours later, thinking "At least it will be done when I wake up."  I get up in the morning and before going to work, go check it out, it was up to like 40% or something.

     Frustrated, I go off to work thinking "I know people said the XP install is slow, but there's gotta be something wrong, it can't be THAT slow."

     A 5 minute conversation with a coworker lead me to believe I put the CDROM and HDD on the same IDE ribbon.  I got home, went straight in the office and checked my connections. Sure enough, they were on the same ribbon, with nothing on the slave connector.  I set it up with HDD on master, and CDROM on slave.  XP install was done in under 40 minutes from start to finish.

     

     



  • That is pretty much un-WTF-y. 



  • It was, however, funny and I enjoyed it.



  • Well, the real WTF here is that the installer is so crappy it can't even properly interleave between the two drives. I have had that setup (where a HDD shares the IDE link with a CD drive) for years and never noticed any slowdowns while in Windows itself (never tried the installer with that setup).



  • @ShadowLord said:

    Well, the real WTF here is that the installer is so crappy it can't even properly interleave between the two drives. I have had that setup (where a HDD shares the IDE link with a CD drive) for years and never noticed any slowdowns while in Windows itself (never tried the installer with that setup).

     

    Ahh, but I'm betting both of your devices on the same chain are NOT both set to be the master device, which is what I believe the OP was getting at. . .  



  • No,the CD was set to Primary Slave.  Which just goes to show I was deliberate at putting both on the same ribbon :)

     



  • @Toaster said:

    Ahh, but I'm betting both of your devices on the same chain are NOT both set to be the master device, which is what I believe the OP was getting at. . .
     

     

    Yeah, but if both devices were master on the same IDE controller, his BIOS wouldn't recognize them and he couldn't even start the install. It sounds like the OP thinks that the primary IDE controller is "master" and the secondary is "slave." Data transfers between HD and CD can indeed be slow when both devices are on the same controller, but not usually that slow.



  •  TRWTF is that he's using PIO mode to try to install such a massive operating system. UltraDMA is so the way to go.



  • @TwelveBaud said:

     TRWTF is that he's using PIO mode to try to install such a massive operating system. UltraDMA is so the way to go.

     

     

    Sorry, but TRWTF is that he was going from windows 95 to XP. Whats next, upgrade the 3.1 machine to Vista?



  • @ShadowLord said:

    the installer is so crappy it can't even properly interleave between the two drives.
     

    XP's installer is pretty bad. Ever watch how it loads drivers for every raid and scsi controller on the planet before it even gets to the "Welcome..." parts? It also trashes the drive pretty hard while copying files. Guess no one bothered optimizing the file layout to match what the installer's script calls for.

    Say what you want about the quality of Vista (or lack thereof), but at least the new image-based installer is far more efficient.



  • TRWTF is that "I bought a new HDD, new motherboard and a copy of XP." and didn't buy more memory, or a new processor.  Don't tell me you actually bought a motherboard in 2002 that was compatible with whatever your Win95 machine was running?  I suppose XP runs on a high-end Pentium 2, but I mean come on man!  Also you probably should have gotten a new CD-ROM, for $20 you could have gone from your 95 machine's 2x to a comfy 24x



  • Just for clarification, yes, I bought new MB and processor, and new memory for the new MB.  I wasn't trying to run XP on 95 hardware



  • @taylonr said:

    Just for clarification, yes, I bought new MB and processor, and new memory for the new MB.  I wasn't trying to run XP on 95 hardware
    So much of the old machine is LEFT?



  • @taylonr said:

    No,the CD was set to Primary Slave.  Which just goes to show I was deliberate at putting both on the same ribbon :)

     

    I've seen a similar issue on my girlfriend's father's Dell machine.  Out of nowhere his new 320GB IDE HD would start showing data transfer rates similar to a 1.44MB floppy circa 1992.  Changing IDE cables would cause the machine to not boot (Dell had issues with any cables they didn't provide - they had IDE cables with a hole punched through one of the wires).  We had one HD and one DVD drive on each channel, 3 out of 4 worked fine.  Was only the secondary master that was fubar'd.  Eventually we removed the extra DVD drive, and put the two HDs on the same channel, all set to cable select.  That worked fine.... for about 6 months.  Same issue started happening again, so we just retired the stupid thing.

    I wish I had "words of wisdom", but all I can give is the "I've had this issue before" rant.  I'm just happy my home machine is 100% free of IDE.



  • @taylonr said:

    Sure enough, they were on the same ribbon, with nothing on the slave connector.  I set it up with HDD on master, and CDROM on slave.  XP install was done in under 40 minutes from start to finish.

     

     

    Not XP's fault you build your own PC despite not knowing how.



  • @dtech said:

    Not XP's fault you build your own PC despite not knowing how.
    Yes it is! They should detect bad builds and fix it for me!



  • @dtech said:

    @taylonr said:

    Sure enough, they were on the same ribbon, with nothing on the slave connector.  I set it up with HDD on master, and CDROM on slave.  XP install was done in under 40 minutes from start to finish.

    Not XP's fault you build your own PC despite not knowing how.

     

    Might want to get that reading comprehension in for a tune-up.  First line of OP

    Okay, so this one takes a shot at me, but think it's kinda funny.

     From the get go, I was saying I was what screwed it up, not XP

     



  • @taylonr said:

     From the get go, I was saying I was what screwed it up, not XP
     

    I think we are all trying to figure out why you posted it in the first place really.



  •  Wow. What a bunch of dicks.



  • @Zylon said:

     Wow. What a bunch of dicks.

     

    Is that why you came running?



  • @Zylon said:

     Wow. What a bunch of [b]people who have[/b] dicks.



  • @dtech said:

    @Zylon said:

     Wow. What a bunch of people who have dicks except the Dutch people who all have vaginas.

     

    FTFY



  •  Just checked: no vagina...

     

    But you probably think that Holland is the capital of Kopenhagen, right?  



  • @MasterPlanSoftware said:

    @Zylon said:

     Wow. What a bunch of dicks.

     

    Is that why you came running?

    Alert: Oh Snap Detected! 



  • @mbvlist said:

    Just checked: no vagina...

    We weren't asking about your mother... uh, thanks for checking, though... *barf*

     

    @mbvlist said:

    But you probably think that Holland is the capital of Kopenhagen, right?

    You mean it's a real place??  I just thought Holland was made up by parents to scare children with stories of surrender and military failure!  Wow, my university pamphlet textbook on European history makes so much more sense now!  Tell me, is it true there are real dragons in Europe?  My professor said there weren't but we had this big debate in class and the students ended up shooting him and then we saw a television and sort of forgot what was going on so I never figured it all out.  Thanks, bro!



  • @morbiuswilters said:

    My professor said there weren't but we had this big debate in class and the students ended up shooting him and then we saw a television and sort of forgot what was going on so I never figured it all out.

    Thanks for the laugh!



  • Good story, Hansel!



  • @MarcB said:

    XP's installer is pretty bad. Ever watch how it loads drivers for every raid and scsi controller on the planet before it even gets to the "Welcome..." parts?
     

    Earleir versions of NT would prompt you to select the controlers you wanted to load support for. That was worse. 



  • @mbvlist said:

     Just checked: no vagina...

     

    But you probably think that Holland is the capital of Kopenhagen, right?  


    Don't mind MPS and morbius. There're just a bit pissed that they can't win (persuade everyone that their viewpoint is the absolute truth) in the gun vs no-gun threat ("So this is what we are expected to learn").
    That's also why morbius has his not-so-funny signature now.



  • @dtech said:

    That's also why morbius has his not-so-funny signature now.

    Actually, it's quite funny. You weren't in the channel. It went on beyond that.



  • @AbbydonKrafts said:

    @dtech said:
    That's also why morbius has his not-so-funny signature now.

    Actually, it's quite funny. You weren't in the channel. It went on beyond that.

     

    Never knew we had an IRC until now, I take it's the one from your sig? Will join 



  • @dtech said:

    Never knew we had an IRC until now, I take it's the one from your sig? Will join

    I, as well as others, have been advertising it in our sigs for a while now. :-)



  • @dtech said:

    There're just a bit pissed that they can't win (persuade everyone that their viewpoint is the absolute truth) in the gun vs no-gun threat ("So this is what we are expected to learn").
     

    Riiiiight, we are the ones who have every point run down and ruined, and then moved on to try and rally support in other threads... 

    Seriously man, you were run off the thread because you made NO good arguments. You had NO point, and you looked like a fool.

    Don't carry this shit around to other threads trying to spark new flamewars.


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