On Sunday 06 January 2002 01:46 am, you wrote:
> Hi again,
>
> I ran the diagnostics utility and I have several warnings.  I need some
> help in heeding the warnings so I turn to you guys.  I have no idea what to
> do.  Thank you for any of your help.  First warning
>
> "Warning:  PCI latency too high.  Device could hog the bus for too long."
>
> How do I lower the latency and what do I lower it to?
>
> I have 3 of these warnings all pertaining to the following
>
> Intel Corp 82443BX/ZX 44OBX/ZX CPU TO Bridge (AGP Implemented)
>
> Intel Corp 82371AB/EB/MB PIIX4 EIDE Controller
>
> Intel Corp 82371AB/EB/MB PIIX4 USB controller
>
>
> Next Warning
>
> "STB Velocity 128 : Font smoothing reduces video performance.
>
> What do I do here?
>
> Next warning.
>
> Hard disk (C:)  Large cluster sizes waste disk space
> Break drive into smaller partitions or use FAT32
>
> How do I do this?
>
> Thank you all for any help you can give me.  tannis zamora
>
Tannis:
It looks like you have installed Sisoft Sandra. If these are all of the
problems that Sandra found, I'd say that your system was in pretty good
shape, as they are related to relatively minor performance issues; none of
them would explain the problems that you noted in your earlier
posting ["Afternoon"].

PCI latency refers to the amount of time that the PCI bus waits (measured in
CPU cycles) between bus accesses. I checked out two sites
(www.tomshardware.com) and another on Que done by Scott Mueller, the author
of the "Upgrading and Updating PC's books. Both recommend using the default
setting, although Tom says that it may require adjustment if you are having
problems with a PCI sound card. Both of them note that changing the setting
may result in your system becoming unstable. You MIGHT want to try resetting
this to the default value -- some BIOS allow you to do this.

Font smoothing is a technique used to improve appearance and legibility.
There is a performance hit associated with this technique, but AFAIK it
shouldn't affect system stability. I've got very old eyes, so I consider
anything that improves legibility to be a Very Good Thing. You can try
turning font smoothing off, but I expect that you'll be disappointed with the
results.

When and if you reinstall Windows (and most people end up doing that from
time to time -- in my case, it's at least once a year), it would be a good
idea to reformat to use a FAT32 filesystem rather than FAT16; you will find
that you have a lot more free space on your drive and, at least as far as I
can tell, there won't be any change in performance. However, as before, I
don't think that this will improve the stability of your system.

Things you might want to do:
1. Make sure that your registry is clean (there was a recent thread about
this topic.)
2. As suggested by Steve Imler, verify that you have the latest versions of
all the drivers required by your system.
3. Use Microsoft Update (or whatever) -- maybe they've made some changes.
4. Look through the mail list archives (both PCSOFT and PCUILD) for specific
problems. They can be an invaluable resource.
5. Keep coming back here with questions.

Good luck,
Carroll Grigsby

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