Member Avatar for tigerbright

After updating to XP service pack 3 from service pack 2

i was just wondering whether anyone noticed a longer time to complete hard disk drive intensive tasks such as manually launched full system anti-virus scans?

My systems rate of of work done for this type of task decreased by about 25%

there could be other factors that relate to my system only , that is why i am interested in other system owner's experiences.

regards from tigerbright

  • 3 Contributors
  • 3 Replies
  • 120 Views
  • 3 Months Discussion Span
  • Latest Post Latest Post by tigerbright

Dani AI

Generated

Thread begins with reporting slower disk‑heavy operations after an SP3 upgrade; other members (, ) reported no noticeable change. When only one machine regresses after an update, the service pack itself is often not the direct culprit — common root causes are drivers/firmware, a controller falling back to PIO, AV interaction, disk health, or insufficient RAM causing paging.

Useful diagnostics include:

  • Capture disk activity with Performance Monitor while a manual full scan runs: add counters like \PhysicalDisk(*)\Avg. Disk sec/Transfer, \PhysicalDisk(*)\Avg. Disk Queue Length, and \PhysicalDisk(*)\% Disk Time. High Avg. Disk sec/Transfer or long queue length points to I/O bottlenecks.
  • Identify the offending process using Task Manager or Sysinternals Process Explorer / Procmon to see which process issues the most reads/writes.
  • Inspect Event Viewer (System) for disk/controller errors or timeouts.

Practical corrective steps:

  • Verify controller/driver/firmware: update IDE/SATA/SCSI drivers and chipset INF. In Device Manager check the IDE channel Advanced Settings for Current Transfer Mode (should read an Ultra DMA mode, not PIO). If a channel is stuck in PIO, uninstall that IDE channel and reboot so Windows redetects it.
  • Run chkdsk /r at next reboot and use the vendor disk utility to check SMART. Defragment mechanical drives if fragmentation is severe.
  • Test antivirus interaction by temporarily disabling on‑access scanning (or run the scan with AV paused) to compare; also check for scheduled background tasks or indexing services.

Cautions and final notes: back up data and create a restore point before driver or registry changes. If PerfMon shows sustained high disk wait times and hardware is old, a faster drive or more RAM is the pragmatic solution. PerfMon logs and Process Explorer samples give objective numbers to compare before/after any change.

Recommended Answers

All 3 Replies

Member Avatar for Godsp3ed

Nope, i didn't find much changes in performance...works fine for me as of now...feels a bit secure as compared to SP2 :P ..lol :D

Member Avatar for jbennet

No. XP SP3 didnt make any changes to that part of the system. It was just a rollup of all the post SP2 hotfixes and updates + one new bit of networing technology and some changes to the installer.

Member Avatar for tigerbright

o well, none to worry now - woke mine up with a 10k scsi drive

Be a part of the DaniWeb community

We're a friendly, industry-focused community of developers, IT pros, digital marketers, and technology enthusiasts meeting, networking, learning, and sharing knowledge.