Bonzai

Yeah, ok, time to ask for help ...

So a few months ago I needed more space since I maxxed out my 75Gb HD. So I went to Best-Buy and got me a 300Gb HD.

Installed, partitioned to 300Gb, and such.

During the install, XP bitched about the partition being greater than 74-ish Mb and asked if I wanted to adjust some registry setting to allow for >74-ish sized partitions.

I said sure, gof er it, and it did.

So now I have a 74-ish C: and a new 300Gb D:.

Um, things slowed down a bit. Disk access/throughput it seems. I noticed right off the bat when I started moving stuff from C: to D:.

Around the same time of course WoW comes out and when I enter IF I get some good old lag. I look down, HD is flashing faster than a $2 hooker. Constant for about 30 to 60 seconds. WoW is unresponsive during this time, but after it's done playing jitterbug with my HD, things are usable.

This reminds me of old EQ when you rounded the corner towards the bank in freeport. I resolved that problem with getting more RAM.

So now I'm thinking that maybe this registry tweak XP did to allow for the 300Gb partition is my culprit since the sluggy-nish is outside of WoW too. I've never had Photoshop or anything bog down like this prior to the 300Gb install.

Anyone know wher eI can find info out about this registry change XP did on me or other things to check to speed things up?

Heck, I'm getting to the point where I wanna reformat the whole system and only have partion sizes under 75 megs if that makes things back to normal.

A gnome thx U.

... Bonzai


Edit: Alienware 2.8Ghz, 500Mb RAM PC-1066. nVidia Ti 4600