harddisk activity while both machines on

[Akash]

hi

i built a new machine as the old one i thought could not handle being a 'host' on the network

now its a 1900xp with 1gb ram
when its offline its great.... when its online its great
damn fast
but when i turn my client machine on (which is connected to this machien via hub and ahs ICS) theres a lot of harddisk activity

when i load something like notepad, it takes a few secs before it loads
windows explorer same

is there something the client keeps accessing this HD for?
i know the client doesnt get software or files from this one as it was standalone at one point


Akash

 

[JJB6486]

There is a slowdown on the gateway machine when running ICS, because the gateway machine is pulling NAT, DNS Forwarding, DHCP, etc. Things may slow down a bit.

Does the increased hard disk activity happen only when the client machine is on? That may just be XP automatically creating a restore point, or indexing a NTFS partition for faster searching. There are a lot of "behind the scenes" features of XP that will make the hard drive chatter away for a while when a machine is just idling.

JJB6486

 

[Akash]

its not an idling issue
and yes it only happens when the client machine is on

theres not 'harddisk activity' but rather that when i load a program there is more activity than normal
turn the client machine off and programs load instantly (even those that are not already in memory from loadnig them previously)
if i left the machie alone theres no HD activity.... only when i start doing things

 

[tomdekok]

what server are you using? 2000 server or .net?

It sounds like you are working peer to peer. if you give more info, i might be able to help.

 

[Akash]

Machine1:
base 10 hub
winxp pro

Machine 2:
utp cable from this machine to the hun
win xp pro

no server involved

 

[tomdekok]

Machine1:
base 10 hub
winxp pro

Machine 2:
utp cable from this machine to the hun
win xp pro

no server involved

*****************

Might you have "by accident" any IP or DNS configured as "obtain automatically"? Since you don't have a DHCP or DNS server, this might be the problem. The second client might be searching for a server that isn't there to provide this info. (As the first pc was already present when it connected to the network).
Or the other way around; the first pc thinks the second might be a server and starts requesting info.

Check IP and DNS info!

It might be that you have configured one of two DNS addresses (especially the first) as the other pc. Or both. This might create the same problem.

Try this: Turn on the task manager and see what processes create this as it happens. This should be possible since it is not just happening while idle, which is harder to detect.

 

[tomdekok]

Something to add:

Make sure both have DHCP client turned on!

 

[Akash]

well since im using ICS for the internet sharing... the client has 192.168.0.1 as a dns and gateway

 

[tomdekok]

Ok, for ICS you only need to set the gateway, not DNS.

 

[tomdekok]

Ok, for ICS you only need to set the gateway, not DNS.

 

[Akash]

ah!
would this be the cause of the harddisk activity on the hos tmachine though?

 

[Akash]

k i tried it just now
didnt work 🙂
had to set both gateway and dns to 192.168.0.1 to get it working
it detected my isp was shared but didnt detect a connection

actually when i checked its settings, it was on autodetect....
i just set it to its 192.168.0.3 (on the client) and subne tetc
up till now, it was running on autodetect

 

[tomdekok]

i will respond later when i have more time, but i thought the last to be the case.
I will respond as fast as i can.

 

[tomdekok]

I think the fact that you had it on IP autodetection was the problem. There tends to be quite some traffic when the DHCP host cannot be found.
I think this might solve the problem.

By the way, the event viewer is very important. If there is something wrong, it is bound to show there and might give a clue on what is wrong.
But don't trust MS too much...most of the time you stare at messages that you can't figure out, and guess what? MS doesn't have any help on the topic either. LOL

 

[Akash]

lol very true!

hmm i think HD is ok though now.
i wonder if that did the trick
i will have to try it out and see if its the same or is it ok

cheers