about upgrading from win98

[sryhanna]

i decided to try 2000 as i had been told that i would not get full utilisation of my 512mb ddr. But found it was so slow. also using siside.exe dropped average read from approx 24000 to 16500. reinstalling and setting up agp via the inf method and NOT running siside cured this problem, but 50% of the time it would freeze on start.

i've gone back to 98 and everythings fine.

however, as time goes on, in order to keep up with development i will have to upgrade. my question is, is xp as cluttered an op system as 2000 and will i be able to get close to the clean running i get with 98.

i do not use a network and want to be able to use a system that can have all the unnecessary background ops turned off.

also if it is true that win98 does not utilise memory over 128mb as standard, is there any software out there that i can use to make 98 recognise the mem i have.

i wouldn't say my system is exactly slow but it was frustrating seeing things like explorer taking an age to refresh in 2000.

Why can't we have a simple uncluttered system for people who don't need or want all of the posh extras that eat up memory and resources. 'better' isn't always best!

k7s5a w/o lan ('fixed')
1.3 tb o/c to 138/138
011109 bios
512meg crucial ddr
vividxs 32meg
ibm 30gig deskstar
52x atapi cd
16x10x40 Mirror cd-rw (BTC firmware)

any ideas?

by the way, anyone know where mrathlons fix faq has gone to?

cheers

 

[davlyn]

Try ME it is not as cluttered as xp and 2000 is very slow sometimes...

 

[bertieg]

I have to disagree ME is buggy as hell if u dont want 2000 use 98se.I use XP clean install and after a few teething probs it runs fine.

 

[davlyn]

You are 1000% right 98se is the best of them all... unless you have a wizbang top of the line pc...

 

[Shadey]

Why can't we have a simple uncluttered system for people who don't need or want all of the posh extras that eat up memory and resources. 'better' isn't always best!

we do - its called win98, and it looks like you're using it already

- - - -

1. Do you have the HDD on the same IDE channel as the CDROM ?

If so thats one factor for slow harddisk performace. Even if you had a UDMA 100 HDD running full speed it will ultimately be slowed down to the speed of the CDROM drive, if they are on the same IDE channel. (In bios settings - what access mode has been dictated for the CDROM? PIO or UDMA or AUTO ?)

2. Did you install W2K SP2 ? It would have allowed HDD to run at UDMA 66 or faster.

3. Did you install W2K on a NTFS partition ? W2K would had run faster on NTFS.

4. Did you check processor utilisation while you performesd refreshes in windows explorer. I dunno if your HDD was running really slow, or because of heavy CPU utilisation, because of some background TSR running, eg system scans from anti-virus programs, or others.

Hopefully that should give you some idea why you had slow performance.

 

[Shadey]

Sorry, I did not intend to make this post long winded.

Originally posted by pokopiko

Even if you had a UDMA 100 HDD running full speed it will ultimately be slowed down to the speed of the CDROM drive, if they are on the same IDE channel.

Sorry, I had heard this story many times before, it simply does NOT apply. It is valid only if HD is slave and CD-ROM master.

Firstly, despite the the hierarchical-sounding names of "master" and "slave", the master device does not have any special status compared to the slave one; they are really equals in most respects. The only practical difference between master and slave is that the PC considers the master "first" and the slave "second" in general terms. For example, DOS/Windows will assign drive letters to the master drive before the slave device. Therefore if you have a master and slave on the primary IDE channel and each has only one regular, primary partition, the master will be give a drive letter that precedes the slave. This just means that the master drive (on the primary channel) is the one that is booted, and not the slave.

Therefore my argument DOES apply in the situation 'when HD is slave and CD-ROM master' AND 'vice-versa'. Whether it applies to the IDE controller used in 'sryhanna's case - i cannot say - It may or may not.

Secondly, I believe i should clarify that the previous statement i made refers to the CDROM running in PIO mode while the HDD running in DMA mode. Because SOME HDD controller chipsets dont support independent device timing, (older ones - I think, not certain). In which case a UDMA 100 device (which also supports all PIO Modes) on the same channel as a device that operates only at PIO mode, will both run in PIO mode (be it - PIO mode 1,2,3,4 or 5, PIO mode 5 also referred as DMA 33). Why - because it is not possible to use PIO modes to control one device on a channel and DMA (or Ultra DMA) modes to control the other one, whether this is dependent on independent device timing - I need to clarify. Depite which device is slave or master or reversed - so it does apply.

3. Did you install W2K on a NTFS partition ? W2K would had run faster on NTFS

This does NOT apply either, the advantages of NTFS over FAT32 are way better security and superior crash recovery, but certainly not speed... in fact the old good FAT (not FAT 32) gives faster access times from both FAT32 and NTFS.

What do I use in my 2000 and XP active partitions? NTFS, of course...

I'm not going to go into a NTFS vs FAT32/16 argument, but . . .

On smaller disk space, the speed between NTFS and FAT32 is NOT that noticeable, in fact they are very similar. Though it is agreed that FAT32 is faster than NTFS on SMALL disk spaces. However as the disk space size increases, the difference is more noticeable.

The reason being . . .
NTFS increases performace by storing 'small' files in the Master File Table (MFT). So rather than moving the heads to the beginning of the disk to read the MFT, and subsequently move the heads to the location of the file (which could be in the middle or the end of the disk) to read it. In NTFS, the heads will move to the beginning of the disk, and read both at the same time, THUS resulting in an increase in SPEED when reading lots of small files.

However, both NTFS and FAT32 can be tweaked to increase performance in speed, by adjusting cluster sizes, optimum cluster sizing depends on whether you mainly use small files or big files and the size of the partitions you intend to make.

It does apply also.