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low level format



 
 
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  #11  
Old April 17th 07, 09:59 AM posted to microsoft.public.windowsme.setup
Mike M
External Usenet User
 
Posts: 2,047
Default low level format

Thanks Mart for stepping in. I was rather busy elsewhere for most of
yesterday afternoon and evening so didn't have a chance to check for any
follow-up from Richard.

Richard,

As Mart has said a slow application doesn't necessarily mean that the disk
is bad. Sadly Win Me doesn't have an Event Log such as is in XP where you
could check if the system was having problems accessing the hard disk. I
can't recall whether you have run chkdsk or not or whether this reports
that you have any bad blocks or not. Even so with modern hard disks with
SMART, mapping out of bad disk blocks tends to be done on the fly by the
disk itself and the operating system and chkdsk will normally only come in
to play when all of the spare hardware blocks have been consumed.

Since we are talking Win Me you are using FAT32 as the filing system on
the hard drive. FAT32 is far more susceptible to slow down if fragmented
than say NTFS filing system which is used by most systems running XP.
Have you therefore recently defragged the drive?
--
Mike Maltby
MS-MVP Windows



Mart wrote:

You haven't yet really made a case for suspecting the HDD. You have
only mentioned that it is a particular Access 2003 .mdb file which is
slow - and other (unspecified) small problems. Is the PC running slow
with ALL programs? Is it slow to boot? How about scandisk (or
'Error checking' if you are running XP)? Does that tell you anything?

What happens if you just open Access alone (no data) - is that slow
too?
Why not try Task Manager (Ctrl+Alt+Del) and see if you can identify
any 'extra' overheads when opening or rather executing queries in
Access.
However, if I ... install it (the database?) on a PC with much lower
capabilities, it functions just fine!


'Install'? - I assume you mean 'open' the same .mdb file on another PC
running Access 2003

Have you tried running the Northwind Sample Database? - Is that slow
too?
Perhaps the re-install is not equivalent to a reformat, and I should
first try the Maxtor utility (for my XP system) for a low level
format, and not worry about a full disc cleaning.


I think you'll find that a Low Level Format is effectively 'a full
disk clean'. It's not exactly 'selective' - it'll wipe the lot,
requiring a full install etc.


  #12  
Old April 17th 07, 06:54 PM posted to microsoft.public.windowsme.setup
atlantis43 via WindowsKB.com
External Usenet User
 
Posts: 8
Default low level format

Mart:
Is the PC running slow with ALL programs?

Hard to tell, as the only one I can compare to previous is my MSAccess Db.
Mozilla, SpeechRecognition, etc all seem to be a bit slower than before, but
not as impressively slower than Access. Also seems somewhat slow to boot,
but again, not impressively so.

How about scandisk (or 'Error checking' if you are running XP)

I've only run defrag, but with no improvement. I'll try 'error checking'.

What happens if you just open Access alone (no data)

Don't know quite what you mean. The Db window opens OK, but anything I truy
to do within an access Db runs slowly.

Why not try Task Manager (Ctrl+Alt+Del)

Too damned many things to try omitting, and I'm not familiar enough with most
of them to know which are important. Also, I should have noted that the
modules of Access take forever to load INITIALLY. If I close the module
window and then re-open ir, it re-opens much faster. Thus, I'd have to close
Access each time I change settings on task mgr.

Install'? - I assume you mean 'open' the same .mdb file on another PC running
Access 2003

Yes

Have you tried running the Northwind Sample Database? - Is that slow too?

Yes. Not noticeably, but the module section is very small, and there is
little data in the Db to evaluate query run-time, etc.

You haven't yet really made a case for suspecting the HDD. You have only
mentioned that it is a particular Access 2003 .mdb file which is slow - and
other (unspecified) small problems. Is the PC running slow with ALL
programs? Is it slow to boot? How about scandisk (or 'Error checking' if
you are running XP)? Does that tell you anything?

What happens if you just open Access alone (no data) - is that slow too?

Why not try Task Manager (Ctrl+Alt+Del) and see if you can identify any
'extra' overheads when opening or rather executing queries in Access.

However, if I ... install it (the database?) on a PC with much lower
capabilities, it functions just fine!


'Install'? - I assume you mean 'open' the same .mdb file on another PC
running Access 2003

Have you tried running the Northwind Sample Database? - Is that slow too?

Perhaps the re-install is not equivalent to a reformat, and I should first
try the Maxtor utility (for my XP system) for a low level format, and not
worry about a full disc cleaning.


I think you'll find that a Low Level Format is effectively 'a full disk
clean'. It's not exactly 'selective' - it'll wipe the lot, requiring a full
install etc.

Your comments sound convincing, but I remain confused. My particular

[quoted text clipped - 49 lines]
I had run the manufacturer's test utility such as Maxtor's PowerMax or
Seagate's SeaTools and the utility had made this recommendation.


--
Message posted via WindowsKB.com
http://www.windowskb.com/Uwe/Forums....setup/200704/1

  #13  
Old April 17th 07, 07:02 PM posted to microsoft.public.windowsme.setup
atlantis43 via WindowsKB.com
External Usenet User
 
Posts: 8
Default low level format

Mike:
Sadly Win Me doesn't have an Event Log such as is in XP where you
could check if the system was having problems accessing the hard disk.

I'll check this on my system that is running XP (if I can find what you mean
Yes, system has been defragged, but to no avail

Thanks, Richard

Mike M wrote:
Thanks Mart for stepping in. I was rather busy elsewhere for most of
yesterday afternoon and evening so didn't have a chance to check for any
follow-up from Richard.

Richard,

As Mart has said a slow application doesn't necessarily mean that the disk
is bad. Sadly Win Me doesn't have an Event Log such as is in XP where you
could check if the system was having problems accessing the hard disk. I
can't recall whether you have run chkdsk or not or whether this reports
that you have any bad blocks or not. Even so with modern hard disks with
SMART, mapping out of bad disk blocks tends to be done on the fly by the
disk itself and the operating system and chkdsk will normally only come in
to play when all of the spare hardware blocks have been consumed.

Since we are talking Win Me you are using FAT32 as the filing system on
the hard drive. FAT32 is far more susceptible to slow down if fragmented
than say NTFS filing system which is used by most systems running XP.
Have you therefore recently defragged the drive?
You haven't yet really made a case for suspecting the HDD. You have
only mentioned that it is a particular Access 2003 .mdb file which is

[quoted text clipped - 22 lines]
disk clean'. It's not exactly 'selective' - it'll wipe the lot,
requiring a full install etc.


--
Message posted via WindowsKB.com
http://www.windowskb.com/Uwe/Forums....setup/200704/1

  #14  
Old April 24th 07, 09:49 PM posted to microsoft.public.windowsme.setup
cquirke (MVP Windows shell/user)
External Usenet User
 
Posts: 202
Default low level format

On Sun, 15 Apr 2007 21:12:37 GMT, "atlantis43 via WindowsKB.com"
CQuirke;


Hi!

Your links are very interesting, but the specific troublesome problem seems
to elude 'figuring out'.


OK...

Generally, the year-old PC with lots of ram & free memory & cache seems to
work extremely slowly, predominantly in MSAccess2003.


Ahh... is there an av that is scanning "document files" while they are
in use? It's appropriate to do so, given that MS broke the data/code
distinction by allowing macros and scripts to be embedded in these
"data" files, and having these run automatically... but you can
imagine the performance impact of having a large Access database being
scanned every time it is updated or even cough accessed.

The shop failed to write zeros to my WD hard drive before they re-installed,
even though WD recommends that this should be done before any OS re-install,
so I think that this is a good place to start (in spite of your link).


I don't think that's likely to be relevant, as long as the HD was
file-system-formatted at the time.

What will trully clobber NTFS performance is if the NTFS volume is
mis-aligned so that it is created with 512-byte clusters. That can
happen if originally partitioned for FATxx and then converted to NTFS.

I'm using BING (www.bootitng.com) for partitioning, and that has a
setting to "align for NTFS" that I use even for FATxx volumes. Old
versions used to ask "do you intend converting to NTFS?".



------------------------- ---- --- -- - - - -

I'm on a ten-year lunch break
------------------------- ---- --- -- - - - -

 




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