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Slow Response, install W98, P3 450, 128M

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Not sure if this could be a hardware issue, first time I’ve ever seen it.

I just built a P3 450, HP VB609 Mobo, 128M RAM, Rage IIC AGP video. Once the BIOS found all the drives (2 HDD, CD, DVD), I began installing Win 98 2nd ed. Done this 8 trillion times, but this time Win took almost 20 hours to install! Even once installed, everything is running as if it were an old 486.

No other progs installed yet, no updates added, nothing except Drive C with Win98 on it. Starts up slow, all programs respond with extremely long lag times (calc, notepad, explorer), shuts down normal speed. In DOS, copies, moves, and lists dir contents with no problem. Any ideas please speak up! Thanks in advance.

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Check the following

In reply to Slow Response, install W98, P3 450, 128M

In BIOS is the L2 and L1 cache enabled? The cache makes no odds for DOS but will kill Windows if it is disabled. Try both ways….if the speed is the same either way, you have faulty cache memory…or a faulty CPU.

Do you have the correct FSB setting?

And multiplier?

Have you enabled DMA for the drives?

Have you got the drives jumpered correctly?

Are you using overlay software on the drive or is it supported natively in the BIOS?

You DO have both hard drives on the same IDE cable and the CD/DVD on the other cable, don’t you?!!

Beyond that…

In reply to Check the following

Everything Guru said is correct however beyond that I would look at your hard drives. Either swap the drive or the controller(motherboard) as the windows install is a HD heavy activity and running DOS ussually isn’t.

bad HD

In reply to Beyond that…

I had a HD with bad clusters that took forever to install. Once installed it was extremely slow. Ran scandisk, which showed the bad clusters. Installed on another HD, no further problems.

Kristopher

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