Something hosed my system...

[JCKnife]

I started a thread about this in the software forum before I really understood the extent of the problem, but now that I've got more info I wanted to put this in front of more eyes.

I'm running a P4 3.0 GHz on an 865PE chipset ASUS mobo with 512 MB ram and formerly one WD 80 gig hd. I filled that one so yesterday I added a second WD 80 gig HD. I put it on the same IDE channel as the master, and configured original as master and new as slave via jumpers. I formatted the new drive and assigned it as part of the primary partition. As soon as it was ready I moved several emulators onto it, including FCEU, ZSNES, Project 64 and VBadvance. Immediately I noticed performance problems in all of these except for ZSNES.

I deleted them and re-installed them; FCEU is working fine, but VBA and P64 still lag behind how they performed when I only had the one HD.

THEN, I discovered that MAME and other stuff still on the original HD is running like crap. My system should be able to handle MK2 with flying colors. I'm getting an average FPS of 10 and mostly seeing 4 FPS during actual gameplay.

COnfounded by what could be hogging my system resouces, I've disconnected the IDE cable and power to the new drive. It now boots I N C R E D I B L Y slow (like several minutes) and when it's done it still runs like crap.

1, any idea where I went wrong?
2, any idea what I should do next?

I'm thinking I need to start from scratch, format both drives, just totally start over. Which will be a real PITA becuase it means I need to disconnect from my arcade monitor, take out my AVGA card and put back my cheap-o graphics card to hook to a regular monitor for the re-do (I can't install windows only seeing half the screen!)

Any advice appreciated, but I think I'm just hosed here.

[fastredpacman]

What were the original jumper settings on your original master drive? Did you put back the jumper settings on your original drive to what they were before you put the second drive in? What OS are you using, and what file system do you have on both drives? I've run into problems before because the system wants the master set to master and the slave set to cable select so give it a go maybe it will make a diffrence.

[loddie]

Also make sure it's set to DMA in the device manager.

[SOAPboy]

Also make sure it's set to DMA in the device manager.

Yep

Also, do the basic, Defrag, scandisk, adaware, antivirus

[JCKnife]

You're not gonna believe this...it was a hardware problem NOT related to either HD.

I re-formatted the new drive and installed XP on it. Fired up the system, loaded MAME and MK2, and STILL was getting like 10 FPS performance! WTF!!!???

So I unseated and reinstalled the RAM and CPU, but here's what I think really did the trick: I have a power cord powering my CP that I oringinally had wired to the same harness as the original HD, but when I added the 2nd HD I moved that CP power tap over to the same power harness that feeds the case fan. I know that case fan is monitored and controlled by the system BIOS. I really think that somehow having my CP power wired to the same harness as the case fan is what was giving me the trouble.

Anyway, it seems like it's all fine now. Now I've just got to freakin reinstall EVERYTHING.

[cholin]

Aww that sucks, so it was a power problem then.  If your system fan doesnt need as much power, the system cuts it down, causing all your other parts to fail too.  I hate reinstalling, takes so much time.  Good luck anyway.