IDE Cables and a slow computer

jonno_2

my dads pc is very slow and prone to crash.
we took the side panel off to look inside and found that one ide cable is connected to dvd rewriter / floppy drive, and the other is connected to dvd rom / hard drive, and i was wondering if this could cause the pc to play up.
I think i read somewhere that the dvd drives should both be on the same ide cable. i was,t confident enogh to swap things over and decided to leave it alone and ask for some advice on this great site, if i remember correctly i think one of the ide connectors was red and the other white, wheres on my own pc they are black and blue.
any help would be appreciated
thanks.

Browntoa

what motherboard is it ??

does it "BlueScreen" crash or lock up ??

Dark_Forces

I don't think it is going to be your IDE cables slowing your computer. If you are not using the DVD-ROM and the computer at the same time, and the computer is still slow, it may be that you may have to defrag your hard drive nad also run sweeps of your anti-virus and anti-spyware software. I presume you already do these? If you do, it might also be that you might be low on RAM.

CIS

what cpu and ram do you have in the pc and waht OS do you use ??

Does the computer run hot ?,if its getting hot, run it with the side off and see if that stops the crashes.

smcicr

the suggested / recommended method is, as you say, to have the hard drive on 1 IDE channel and the CD / Optical drives on the other (the floppy should have it's own slot & cable so doesn't come into the equation). this will maximise the chance of having everything working as quickly as possible. essentially the system can only deal with one device on a channel at a time (so according to your description you currently have a dvd rom and a HDD on one channel and a dvd rewriter on the other) so if you are making a request of the dvd rom drive then the system will need to clear that before it can deal with any requests to the HDD. hope that makes sense.

excellent info on this here: http://www.pcguide.com/ref/hdd/if/ide/confPerformance-c.html and also the next page on (link to it at the bottom of the above page)

the other points made above are also relevant - old HDD, full or fragmented HDD, overheating pc, sometimes a multitude of freeware / shareware installs can cause problems, obviously malware could be involved, specs on the machine would be useful so things like OS issues (in need of updates, patches etc) or RAM shortages can be discounted...

one last thing - if you do decide to switch devices around then it's very important to remember that you have to set each device as a master or a slave (there is often a automatic option called cable select too) via physical jumpers on the device - the master device must always be at the end of the IDE cable so presuming you currently have the HDD set as a master on one channel and the rewriter as a master on the other you should be able to switch the dvd rom drive without making any changes as it should already be set as a slave device and will only be changing channels.

let me know if any of that makes sense

skim

smcicr wrote:

the suggested / recommended method is, as you say, to have the hard drive on 1 IDE channel and the CD / Optical drives on the other (the floppy should have it's own slot & cable so doesn't come into the equation). this will maximise the chance of having everything working as quickly as possible. essentially the system can only deal with one device on a channel at a time (so according to your description you currently have a dvd rom and a HDD on one channel and a dvd rewriter on the other) so if you are making a request of the dvd rom drive then the system will need to clear that before it can deal with any requests to the HDD. hope that makes sense.

excellent info on this here: http://www.pcguide.com/ref/hdd/if/ide/confPerformance-c.html and also the next page on (link to it at the bottom of the above page)

the other points made above are also relevant - old HDD, full or fragmented HDD, overheating pc, sometimes a multitude of freeware / shareware installs can cause problems, obviously malware could be involved, specs on the machine would be useful so things like OS issues (in need of updates, patches etc) or RAM shortages can be discounted...

one last thing - if you do decide to switch devices around then it's very important to remember that you have to set each device as a master or a slave (there is often a automatic option called cable select too) via physical jumpers on the device - the master device must always be at the end of the IDE cable so presuming you currently have the HDD set as a master on one channel and the rewriter as a master on the other you should be able to switch the dvd rom drive without making any changes as it should already be set as a slave device and will only be changing channels.

let me know if any of that makes sense

Makes sense to me & totally correct - DVD drives communicates at a slower speed than modern Hard drives so keep Hard drives on one IDE & optical drives on the other.

Also worth checking whether you have any nasties on your computer.
try www.spyjacked.co.uk & they'll be able to advise further & check for virus, trojans etc.

jonno_2

thank you all very much for your very helpful advice which is much appreciated.
i,m not sure about his cpu but i know that he has 256 ram memory and he runs xp home.
his pc suffers from lock ups and the black screen.
i will be visiting him next week so i may pluck up the courage to follow your advice as regards switching the devices over.
once again thanks all.