Stalls and terrible file copy speeds

Hey guys,

So after a year on one Vista installation, I decided it was time for me to finally reinstall and upgrade to W7 so that I can actually see what is happening in my games again (damn that Vista installation got bogged down).

I prepped for the reinstallation - backed up all my files onto a second hard drive I have internally, which Vista did at reasonable speeds; not fantastic, but I recall they were around 60MBps between a 10k rpm WD Raptor and a 7200rpm 320GB Caviar.

Windows 7 seemed to install effortlessly - I left the room to go to dinner and came back and it seemed to have completed without error and presented a username creation dialog I do believe.

However, after I installed some drivers, which seemed to go very well, I started to copy files back from my backup drive to the main drive. I tried to copy my 40GB "steamapps" folder from the program Steam. While doing this, my computer would complete the first 2GB or so at about 80MBps, and then stall the file transfer. It would make opening any window almost impossible - firefox wouldn't load, and if it did the second you clicked a link it would freeze again. Control Panel would take about 20 seconds to display its contents. Just an absolute wreck. Almost as if my primary hard drive, the raptor, had stopped responding entirely.

Now, I doubt this is the case, as I can stop the file transfers and it starts to work again, but you can see how frustrating this is for me. I even got 20GB of the files to transfer by manually selecting them (20GB is spread over about 60 files, while the remaining 20 is in about 10,000 files). But trying to copy over a 1.5GB folder has taken more than 15 minutes and it isn't even half way there!

I'm curious if anyone here has any ideas as to what could be causing this problem. I am running a fresh install of Windows 7 from MSDN. I was told it was RTM. Drivers I have installed are the latest 64 bit W7 nForce drivers, as well as the latest 64bit W7 geForce drivers from nVidia. I have also installed nVidia's "System Tools" package.

Programs installed are Firefox, Steam, Logitech g-series Key Profiler, Logitech Setpoint, Foxit Reader, Fraps, AVG Free, and HD Tune Pro (was trying to test write speeds on the HD as well as smart status. HD Tune Pro is reporting that the raptor is reading and writing at about 90MBps (I don't know what is standard though!).

Would love some help. I am more than willing to completely reinstall (and will probably do just that if I do not get any responses).

Great problem description! I like that. Have rep :)

Assuming for a moment the problem is caused by software, it'll probably come down to something like the anti-virus filter drivers interferring with the file copy process - a not uncommon occurrence.

Hence, I have two quick suggestions:

1) Test what happens when you attempt the same drive-to-drive transfers in safe mode, preferably using the command prompt to rule out Explorer issues.

2) Temporarily uninstall the AV and any other non-default "security" utilities you may have added, long enough to ascertain whether their complete absence from the system makes a difference to the file copy issue.

Hey! Thanks for the reply. I actually figured out what it was after google-ing to see if anybody was having problems with Windows 7 and nForce drivers. I read a post somewhere that said Windows 7 already has the nForce IDE/Sata drivers preinstalled. However I did not find post abut anyone having problems like I did.

However, after reading this, I reformatted yet again, and reinstalled my nForce drivers but opted out of installing the storage driver included in the latest driver pack (and it was even a W7 driver!). Now, everything is working wonderfully.

I submitted a driver feedback to nVidia regarding this, but I'm guessing this doesn't happen to everyone or it probably would have had more google search results.

Hey jomanscool2...thanks for your post. I'm having the exact problem and it's driving me nuts. Thanks again.