SSD low Windows Experience Score

Rossatron · 20 May 2012 at 12:39

Hi guys. Bought this system from ocuk a couple of weeks ago and i've been having a lot of random freezes at start up/shut down/during general use. at first i thought it was to do with the gigabyte z77x-d3h which people have been reporting problems with a lot. eg in this thread: http://forums.tweaktown.com/gigabyte/48463-gz-z77x-ud5h-random-freezing-shutdowns.html

I've tried the fixes in there and I'm still getting random freezes. However, I've just noticed something very worrying regarding my SSD (mine is a OCZ Agility 3 60GB, think they've changed it to the Intel one on that system since I purchased it). I checked the Windows Experience Index and for some reason it only has a score of 5.9! I'm POSITIVE it was higher than this when I bought the system, because the overall score was 7.5 based on the graphics score.

Anyone got any idea how this might have happened/what I should do it address it/test it? Seeing as Windows is installed on that SSD it's making me think it might be the cause of my problems... Any help is much appreciated

dave_beast · 20 May 2012 at 14:21

Any help?

Go to C:\Windows\Performance\WinSAT\DataStore and edit the assessments using notepad to what you want

Swordfish · 20 May 2012 at 14:22

Did you set the drive to ACHI in the BIOS before you did the install?

Rossatron · 20 May 2012 at 15:31

It was all set up by OCUK so I assume they did that. I will have a look in the BIOS to see what I can find.

craarc · 20 May 2012 at 16:36

either ide mode or ahci will still give a better performance score than that mines on ide and get 7.9 i think it was itll be something other than that i guess.

Maundie · 20 May 2012 at 17:35

Rossatron said:
It was all set up by OCUK so I assume they did that. I will have a look in the BIOS to see what I can find.

Mine was setup by OCUK but it was still set at IDE, changed it myself and re-installed Windows.

It maybe because it's over 50% full as I've heard that regarding the Agility's but mine isn't anywhere near that so haven't got round to this issue yet.

ed79 · 20 May 2012 at 18:00

Maundie said:
Mine was setup by OCUK but it was still set at IDE, changed it myself and re-installed Windows.

It maybe because it's over 50% full as I've heard that regarding the Agility's but mine isn't anywhere near that so haven't got round to this issue yet.

Ah, I have an idea (possibly). Have you got SP1 installed?

I had exactly the same thing with my SSD. Installed Windows from disk and it only scored 5.9. (Which could cause problems because I believe unless Windows detects a score of 6.5 or over then it doesn't do the usual SSD stuff like disabling defrag and turning off Superfetch)

Anyway, after SP1 came down via Windows Update I now score 7.4 on the HD.

Rossatron · 20 May 2012 at 18:08

Thanks for the replies everyone. I found out what the issue was regarding freezes, it was related to the SSD. I checked Event Viewer and the following error came up whenever there was a freeze:

'The device, \Device\Ide\iaStor0, did not respond within the timeout period.'

Did some investigating and this is a problem with Intel Link Power Management and certain SSD's. If anyone else has this problem then the fix in the first post of this thread has worked so far for me (touch wood!

)

No idea if it was actually related but I re-ran the WEI and the drive now scores 7.8, so everything seems to be back to normal

My OCZ Agility is over 50% full, but I haven't noticed any problems since getting there (except for the one I mentioned above, but that was happening before it was 50% full). Thanks again for the replies everyone.