ArcaOS Sluggishness

[Remy]

Hey all,

My ArcaOS 5.1 machine has started to get sluggish. Not sure what I can check. For example, opening Drives takes 10 seconds to show the drives, Firefox takes 30 seconds to open.. etc.

Machine is a Dell Precision T3610:

4 Core XEON E5-1603 @ 2.80 Ghz
4 GB RAM
500GB 7200 RPM Mechanical Drive in AHCI mode

I turned off all Virtualization in BIOS.

I don't know what to look for, or where to start. Any help is appreciated.

I have similar long time but it only occurs when I have Big NTFS or not known OS/2 ormaUSB key plugged. (not recognized disk format unde ArcaOS has not have the same result and can be ignored at boot time) 
Once I remove the USB key, system goes faster. as well, after openeing dirves one time, next time are faster but not as fast as without the USB key (or USB disk)

Q: Do you have efat, ntfs or unrecognized USB key ledt plugged in at boot time ? 

[christech]

I think I had the ArcaOS USB installer in and my Describe CDROM..

I also got a 500GB Samsung SSD to install UEFI ArcaOS onto.

[Pete]

Hi

Just wondering if this is multimedia related...

CWMM (multimedia) checks drives and ID tags which may be causing a slowdown.
The good news is that you can turn those checks off in OS2.INI using an INI file editor eg Ini Editor from the INITOOLS package http://web.archive.org/web/20120513231650/http://www.os2world.com/goran/zip/initool110lng.zip

You need to add the following Keys to the CWMM Application

Keys                                                                  Values
mmClsDontCheckDrives                               ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ

mmClsDontReadID3On Drives                   ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ


If you want a drive to be checked simply remove it from the above Values .


Regards

Pete

[Martin Iturbide]

Hi Pete

CWMM (multimedia) checks drives and ID tags which may be causing a slowdown.
....

I'm just curious, what are the utility/function of checking the drive ID Tags that CWMM does? I'm just asking since I don't know much about all the stuff that CWMM has.

Regards

[Pete]

Hi Martin

Something to do with mp3 files I think... don't know as I listen to music not mp3s  :-)

The CWMM Help is installed in \MMOS2\MMCLASS\cwmm.hlp


Regards

Pete

[christech]

Ran into an issue. I Zero'd out the 500GB SSD and ArcaOS installer said it needed to 'fix' the drive and I chose GPT for the partition table and rebooted. Now ArcaOS installer says: "This GPT emulated disk is read-only for the following reason: Broken header 2."

Should I re-zero and try MBR?

Edit: Yeah, I should have used MBR

[christech]

I tried UEFI 5.1 installation on the SSD but it wouldn't boot after Phase 1 from the SSD. I went with the CSM installation like I had on my mechanical drive.

Now I booted off the SSD and an doing an XCOPY C: D: /H/O/T/S/E/R/V to move my files over to the SSD. I ditched the multiple partitions for now.

[christech]

Xcopy from C: to D: did not work. System will not boot from the SSD after that. Anything else I can try? I am reinstalling 5.1 now to the SSD. My mechanical drive is on 5.1 as well.

[Roderick Klein]

Ran into an issue. I Zero'd out the 500GB SSD and ArcaOS installer said it needed to 'fix' the drive and I chose GPT for the partition table and rebooted. Now ArcaOS installer says: "This GPT emulated disk is read-only for the following reason: Broken header 2."

Should I re-zero and try MBR?

Edit: Yeah, I should have used MBR

Avoid MBR, use GPT if you are going to install in UEFI mode.
I guess you only zero's the beginning of the disc.
GPT disc has a copy of the partition table at the end of the disc as well...
Run booted from ArcaOS install media the program initdisk.exe that dan be started from an OS/2
command line.

Roderick

[Pete]

Hi

Xcopy from C: to D: did not work. System will not boot from the SSD after that. Anything else I can try? I am reinstalling 5.1 now to the SSD. My mechanical drive is on 5.1 as well.

You may need to run
    \OS2\INSTALL\BOOTDISK\SYSINSTX.COM D:
presuming D: is the SSD


Regards

Pete

[christech]

I tried Roderick and Pete's suggestions. SYSINSTX was able to copy the files but still didn't boot. Initdisk gave me the "broken header 2" error that I got from my first attempt (I selected GPT)

[Rich Walsh]

Initdisk gave me the "broken header 2" error that I got from my first attempt (I selected GPT)

If you'd like I can PM you my 'mkgpt' utility that was supposed to go into 5.1 but got replaced by 'initdisk'. I _know_ that this one works (for me at least), so if bombs out then you have a disk issue.

[christech]

I'm zero'ing out the drive each time on my macOS machine:

diskutil secureerase 0 /dev/diskx and it takes a few hours so I'm confident it's wiping the entire drive. I can try that util Rich if you want to share it.

[christech]

I found a used SSD 128GB Samsung Pro that I am wiping now with the same method to try out.. much smaller should wipe quicker

[Rich Walsh]

I can try that util Rich if you want to share it.

I sent you a PM with a link to it.

I'm zero'ing out the drive each time on my macOS machine: diskutil secureerase 0 /dev/diskx and it takes a few hours so I'm confident it's wiping the entire drive.

This sounds like a remarkably bad idea! You are wearing out your SSDs needlessly. Only the first and last 100 sectors (at most) need wiping. In any case, if you end up with a bad GPT layout (or you want to revert to MBR) there's a way to repartition it without doing a wipe. It involves making a few temporary changes to config.sys, so I'll save that until it's needed.