10+ seconds to load music/video

The title says it all, when I want to play a music or video file, it takes like 10 seconds (if not more) before windows media player can play it.

I have an old wd 5400rpm hard drive which came with this laptop when I bought it in october 2007. When I did a diagnose a few months back it said my hdd was fine, but it was already very slow then, and even slower now.

So, is it time for a new hdd regardles of what hdd scanners say? I know that formatting won't help much (i formated my hdd like 5 times in september). I do download a lot, and then move the files to an external drive. Maybe it is because I use my drive too much, and the problem will occur with my new hard drive within the year aswell, (somethimes its like 20-40gb a month which I download, then move, or delete, etc).

 

I don't really think the HDD is the reason.... have you reinstalled windows recently? WMP is quite slow anyway, why don't you use something lighter - like VLC Player for example. Have you tried?

 

Do a benchmark and compare with with similar ones.

And check the Disk I/O when idle, maybe something is just using it up

Its probably a software issue not a hardware. It takes a lot longer than 3 years for a hard drive to degrade the performance.

 

@gracy I reinstalled windows while formatting my hard drive in september.

@flip do you know a few good benchmarks (which are understandable) and what is a Disk I/O ?

 

Disk I/O will basically show the load on the HD. HDtunePRO (trial) will let you see this under Disk Monitor.

 

Buy a cheaper SSD or hybrid drive?

First check your BIOS to make sure your controller is in AHCI mode, not IDE or something...

 

Come on, the solution to this problem is by far not an SSD. You underestimate HDDs quite a lot This is most likely a software issue. Try HDTune for benchmarking and post the results here!

Run the test under the "Benchmark" as well as under the "Random Access" tab and screenshot both results.

P.s. make sure there are no programs loading the HDD while you run the tests. Ideally, restart the pc and run HDTune before you start any additional programs.

 

Does this happen with every single video and music file you have? Have you tried to run a defrag program?

 

You should try playing the music with a different program like VLC and see if it is just Windows Media Player that is blowing chunks.

 

Is there an other decent program? I can't seem to install any HDtune program (niether trial or full version).

Also, I defrag my hdd once or twice every week.

Btw, i'll be back after 6 days (leaving to Portugal) to test out any further tips you guys wille give me, so don't forget about this thread rofl, my prob aint fixed yet
If not, it will be after 2 weeks (going to Sweden after Portugal lol).

 

You might also want to check out the health of your drive, failing hard drives can give you plenty of misdiagnoses.

 

even over my wireless network(music on a network drive connected to my router), music starts straight away with Windows Media Player

 

Well there are plenty of programs, but this one we all seem to use and will be easier to compare.

What brand is your HDD? Run a test on it - each manufacturer has its own bootable utility.

But why don't you try VLC player? WMP is in fact slow although not as slow as in your case.

 

I did a test with crystal disk:



Uploaded with ImageShack.us

 

I'd suggest installing Media Player Classic, then drag and drop the files giving you a problem onto MPC Classic. If it takes a long time still, then its likely a codec that you may have installed, or codec pack. In that case you should try uninstalling any codec packs you have that you dont need, or use a proven pack like the shark007 pack. If that doesn't help I'd suggest a clean format and install - now is a good time to do so since SP1 is RTM'd and a clean install of SP1 integrated would be ideal.

 

30MB/s is not proper. Check if it has some bad sectors. Try moving your data to another HDD and fill this one with zeros and remove partition table.

 

From the benchmark you posted, it sure looks like your drive is running in IDE mode or stuck at DMA/33 speeds. Check your hard drive controller in device manager etc and make sure your drive and controllers are working ok. Without looking at it firsthand I'm inclined to say the problem is software related with your drive controller. It also is possible that the drive is having hardware problems, when I/O faults are found, drives can drop down to lower DMA speeds (like the DMA/33 speeds your drive seems to be putting out, which is the lowest DMA speed)

 

Thx for the info, I must add that I was running a few programs (WMP and a web game) while doing that test.

what is IDE mode btw? I opened the device manager but am not sure what to do there.

 

1)Check the harddisk ATA Controller device if it is not listed as AHCI it should be in IDE Mode
2)If you ever installed Windows Xp on your laptop you should have reset it to AHCI Mode by changing it in the BIOS, if you reinstalled Windows 7 or Vista or F6 force load AHCI drivers during Xp installation.

 

Dude... you never load a PC while running benchmarking!! This makes your measurements completely wrong! Best thing is - restart and await everything to load, don't start anything and run the test.