I've just finished building my new PC (details available above in My PC link) and, for the most part, I'm happy with it. It starts up quickly and shuts down just as well. Games run well, and I'm getting a decent frame rate.

The only problem is that it seems to take a long time for programs to start. This includes installers running from the hard disk. Once they get going, they run quickly, but there's a long gap between double clicking an icon and something actually popping up on screen. Sometimes, it causes the computer to become unresponsive and I can't do anything else until the program finishes loading.

The weakest part of the system is the IDE DVD writer, which I'm going to replace soon.

What could the problem be, and how could I test the suspect component?

Thanks.

Hi
For your programms loading they might be scattered around the HDD in fragments which makes loading time alot longer. To defragment follow these instructions:
Start/ All Programs/ Accessories/ System Tools/ Disk Defragmenter

Analyse the HDD and it will tell you if it needs defraging or not but click defragment anyway.

Note: Depending on how much your HDD is fragmented it will take some time.

Hope this helps.

Windows defrag says it doesn't need defragging, but I'll give it a go anyway.

Thank you.

Hi there microman. Try downloading Diskkeeper lite from google, and running that. Its far better (in terms of defragging performance and speed) than the standard windows one. Go into your hardware manager in Control panel>system. Open IDE/ATAPI Devices, and it should be the first Primary IDE Channel, double click on it, and make sure that its set to DMA, not PIO.

Thanks AW_3_3 . I already ran Diskeeper, and it did say there was some fragmentation the drive, and after a defrag, the computer was a bit more sprightly, but still not quite as quick as I'd like.

I'm going to try what you said about the IDE channel, as I did have an IDE DVD drive, and have since swapped it out with a SATA one, but put an ATA hard drive on the IDE channel instead.

With both, when the computer starts, there's a black screen which lists all the IDE devices, and says 'Press any key to continue'. I'm guessing this has something to do with why the computer is running slowly.

Not quite. Windows doesnt recognize SATA controllers that im aware of. Instead, it sees the SATA Controller as another Primary IDE Channel. Make sure the one for the SATA Drives is in DMA, not PIO which is much much slower and uses alot more Processor cycles. (Programmed Input Output)