Resident Evil 5 slow to install?

[Sope]

Hi,

Me and my brother have essentially the same hardware and are both running Windows 7 x64.
I install my games to a separate dedicated partition whereas my brother installs to the default location on C:

Recently we both installed RE5 but it took nearly an hour to install on my setup which was maybe about 3x the length of time it took on my brother's PC. Additionally my system was very slow to respond during the install process despite my CPU usage meter showing very little activity. In contrast, my brother's system performance seemed completely unaffected.

I'm wondering if this is to be expected due to my choice of install partition, or might I have some sort of hardware or driver or even game disc problem? Since the install my system is back to normal and everything seems to be working as it should

Any ideas?

 

[Jonathan_King]

It could be a disc problem, or maybe a hard drive issue.

A scratched DVD will be very slow to read, and a hard drive with bad sectors can be slow too.

Since you don't notice slowness elsewhere, I suspect it could be a DVD issue.

 

[Sope]

OK, here's a couple of results I got using Nero CD-DVD Speed :-





I'm unsure whether the first one testing "Disc Quality" is telling me if the disc is actually good or bad?

 

[Jonathan_King]

I'm not sure either, but I'm guessing that's not good.

Look at the discs. Is yours scratched considerably?

 

[Sope]

I'm not sure either, but I'm guessing that's not good.

Look at the discs. Is yours scratched considerably?

To the naked eye there's no obvious damage at all.

I'm just running a couple more tests with Nero CD-DVD Speed "ScanDisc" mode which I'll post shortly.

I guess it may be useful to run similar tests on my brother's RE5 disc for a comparison as I'm unsure what I'm looking at either.

When I was actually installing the game, I noticed the DVD drive was making a "buzz-buzz buzz-buzz" sound for long periods of time as if it was having to locate little bits of data from randomly different parts of the disc, and rather than spinning continuously, the DVD was being moved little bits at a time (if that makes any sense ).

 

[Jonathan_King]

Yep, that might also suggest a drive problem.

 

[Sope]

Yep, that might also suggest a drive problem.

I did initially suspect my DVD drive as I've heard it doing similar things before.
The second screenshot I originally posted is a benchmark of it's performance but I've nothing to compare it to yet. My initial uneducated guess though is that it doesn't look too bad.

Anyway, here's my final 2 test results of the RE5 DVD :-

Read test


PI/PO test


I'll try to run some similar tests on my brother's setup for comparison.

 

[jr26]

I just installed RE5 earlier today. At first the install went incredibly slow and I think it only got through 500mb in a little under 10 minutes... Shortly after however it jumped up to great speeds and finished the other 6 gig in no time. Not sure what caused the issue but it worked itself out eventually.

 

[smarteyeball]

When I was actually installing the game, I noticed the DVD drive was making a "buzz-buzz buzz-buzz" sound for long periods of time as if it was having to locate little bits of data from randomly different parts of the disc, and rather than spinning continuously, the DVD was being moved little bits at a time (if that makes any sense ).

Generally not a good sign.

Have you used the drive for a lot of burning as well?

One simple way to eliminate the disc or the drive, would be to reinstall the game using your brothers disc.

If it installs quickly, then it's the disc. If it installs slowly (again) then it's probably the drive that's on it's way out.

When a burner goes, it usually goes pretty quickly.

 

[Sope]

When I was actually installing the game, I noticed the DVD drive was making a "buzz-buzz buzz-buzz" sound for long periods of time as if it was having to locate little bits of data from randomly different parts of the disc, and rather than spinning continuously, the DVD was being moved little bits at a time (if that makes any sense ).

Generally not a good sign.

Have you used the drive for a lot of burning as well?

The DVD Drive is only a couple of months old and has only been used a few times for burning. I noticed my firmware version was 1.02 whereas my brother's was 1.03. I've updated it to the latest version now (although the release notes only say it's a fix for W7 backup compatability).

I've got some benchmarks for comparison now :-

DVD drives compared
My PC
Bro's PC

RE5 discs compared
My PC
Bro's PC

RE5 discs compared
My PC
Bro's PC

To me, the two DVD drives performance look similar but my RE5 disc has more errors......I think?

Anyhow, I'll just wait to see what happens with the drive and get it replaced under warranty if necessary. The game disc seems to play fine, and if I need to reinstall I can use my brother's disc.
Happily I don't think it's anything to do with the HDD.

Thanks guy's for all the input.