Hello,

My dual boot 1.5 TB (Seagate) has been acting up. Whenever I boot into XP or VISTA everything is slow. The HHD light blinks at a constant rate no matter what's going on. The XP and Vista progress bar moves at a rate equal to the HHD light. I have used Seagates Seatools and the drive has passed the long test (4 HOURS) numerous times. I have emailed Seagate and am awaiting their reply. I would like to know if there are any other tests I can use to see what is wrong and what my next course of action is. Thanks.Have you fully checked the computer for viruses?I did a scar Wednesday and found nothing. This has been happening since Thursday night. If I could get in to a OS I would run it again but it takes a hour and a HALF to get to a desktop in Vista.If you have auto update turned on it may be trying to finish dloading and installing updates....
Any messages on boot up ? ?
There are no messages on boot up and I don't think it is because of auto update, I just did a update last week.Did this MACHINE run properly before ? ?
If it takes over an hour to boot to an OS there are serious issues here...Yes, this machine has been running very good for a year and half and this problem has just started Thursday.Did you run seatools under Windows or from the bootable cd ? ?
What protection apps are you running ? ?I ran Seatools from a floppy and i have MacAfee total protection on both XP and Vista.Control Panel/System/Hardware/Device Manager....
Right clik IDE controllers and selct Properties.....see if the drive has dropped into PIO mode...We might have a break through. I booted this morning and it seemed to work. Vista did a chkdsk and found a bunch of stuff and seemed to correct it. so far it is running ok. All i did us unplug my extra HHD. I'm going to plug it back in now that everything works.

Don't see anything under Xp or Vista about PIO mode...That worked. Everything is fine and good to go.Good NEWS....Welcome to CH and stop by anytime !I found out it was the cables. Might have to replace them. Thanks.I replace mine yearly. For the price it's worth it.
Did a new build with a GigaByte MBoard yesterday and they have an improved SATA cable design with clik locks on the end...pretty nice as SATA plugs can easily be jarred loose...