I tried to execute Jonathan's suggestion of disabling CPU scaling, but the command I found at http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=87415 sudo killall powernowd Does nothing on my system. > > > What does 'hdparm /dev/hda' say? troy at hplaptop:~$ sudo hdparm /dev/hda /dev/hda: multcount = 0 (off) IO_support = 0 (default 16-bit) unmaskirq = 0 (off) using_dma = 1 (on) keepsettings = 0 (off) readonly = 0 (off) readahead = 256 (on) geometry = 65535/16/63, sectors = 78140160, start = 0 > Try 'hdparm -d1 -u1 -c1 -m8 /dev/hda' and see if it > improves things. You can run 'hdparm -t /dev/hda' before and after > running hdparm as suggested above. I'll run the above command and see if things improve. Right now, hdparm -t /dev/hda is /dev/hda: Timing buffered disk reads: 58 MB in 3.07 seconds = 18.87 MB/sec Check the kernel log for io errors > (using 'dmesg'). You'll know'em when you see'em. I found the following errors using 'dmesg', but I'm not sure what they mean. [11366.456000] ACPI: EC: acpi_ec_wait timeout, status = 32, expect_event = 1 [11366.456000] ACPI: EC: read timeout, command = 128 [11366.456000] ACPI Exception (evregion-0420): AE_TIME, Returned by Handler for [EmbeddedControl] [20070126] [11366.456000] ACPI Exception (dswexec-0462): AE_TIME, While resolving operands for [OpcodeName unavailable] [20070126] [11366.456000] ACPI Error (psparse-0551): Method parse/execution failed [\_SB_.PCI0.ISA_.EC0_.SMRD] (Node df803330), AE_TIME [11366.456000] ACPI Error (psparse-0551): Method parse/execution failed [\_SB_.BAT1.UPBH] (Node df8050d8), AE_TIME [11366.456000] ACPI Error (psparse-0551): Method parse/execution failed [\_SB_.BAT1.CHBP] (Node df805138), AE_TIME [11366.456000] ACPI Error (psparse-0551): Method parse/execution failed [\_SB_.PCI0.ISA_.EC0_.SMSL] (Node df803378), AE_TIME [11366.456000] ACPI Error (psparse-0551): Method parse/execution failed [\_SB_.PCI0.ISA_.EC0_._Q09] (Node df8033d8), AE_TIME Thanks again, Troy -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mailman.mn-linux.org/pipermail/tclug-list/attachments/20071220/5a4ae9dd/attachment-0001.htm