SOLVED: Copying files Maxes one CPU

Hi, recently moving / copying any files from one hard drive to another or even having my files copied over a network is resulting in one of my CPUs maxing out and any audio / video audio grinds to a halt and is skippy and jumpy and it even affects my mouse and website scrolling. Also unpacking WinRar'd files now takes a lifetime!

This problem is rendering my computer useless at multitasking as i often move files while working or listening to music.


Ive checked in task manager but there isnt a process listed that is using the CPU it just says 50% usage and the graph is full. I downloaded Process Explorer and that indicted that the CPU is being used by "Hardware Interrupts".

Im really not sure what to do. Any ideas?

Spec in Sig. Running Windows XP Sp2

 

At a guess you might have things sharing IRQs that are conflicting and causing the slowdown, something along those lines, have you checked for any conflicts?

 

how would i find out about IRQs? bios?

 

Oops, just saw you were running SP2, nevermind.

 

If I didn't know any better I'd say it sounds like DMA has somehow turned off and your drive is defaulting to PIO mode (which uses CPU to perform the file copy), but I've never had that happen on a hard drive (only on a cd rom).

This is OFC if your drive is still PATA, SATA shouldn't have any implications like that

 

Might be processor related rather than HDD problems - tried changing the core affinities for explorer.exe, see if it makes a difference?
Also, play with the tab in System->advanced that switches CPU priority between foreground apps and background processes. It's worth a try.

 

i would say bad driver causing irq sharing
try another sata port, new chipset drivers

 

Hey, will try some of the tings suggested just thought id say im running 2 sata drives but my dvd is pata.

 

Hey, ive done some scouting about and one of my hard drives is in PIO mode but the bios seems happy to set it to UDMA-5 but in windows its running in PIO mode only.

Any ideas?

Ill try using a different sata port as soon as i can.

 

Are they video files?

On my computer some videos have the ability to crash explorer.exe, causing it to launch to 100% CPU utilisation. I think it's a codec thing, whenever explorer tries to generate thumbnails for certain files it cries. Anyway, it can effect copying like you're experiencing.

Try moving the files without using explorer directly, using cmd works fine for me. Either that or quickly select the files you want to move and close the windows displaying them, leaving only the copy dialog open.

 

videos and files. Its nothing like that im afraid. Its deffo PIO mode but i dont know why windows wants the drive like that

 

Lot's out there about this one, here is a random choice from my bookmarks, plus there are many MS KB articles about it.

http://winhlp.com/node/10

Hope it helps.

 

Hah, I knew it. If i remember correctly, windows will force a drive into PIO mode when it encounters a certain number of read (maybe also write) errors on a drive.

Check your cables, run a SMART program on the drive just to make sure it's not actually dying (even if SMART reports back OK it could still be having issues).

The link that johnmalc posted above looks like a good way to start trying to solve your issue

 

Hey that sorted it you LEGEND!

Ive not known what to do about that for ages tank ever so much WOOOOO!

 

Happy that it helped