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Why would changing a mouse result in a several-fold increase in speed of disk access? As far as I can tell they have absolutely nothing in common...
Background: We have three computers in the pharmacy work area. One's the server, which runs both the server and client for the pharmacy software; the next is a workstation, which runs only the client, and the third until now sat under the back counter, and maintained the SQL server and data files for the stored credit cards (because they have to be on a separate machine from the server). Recently machine #2 has begun refusing to boot from shutdown; only way to do it is to remove AC power and the CMOS battery, unplug all USB devices, wait until the caps drain, and then reassemble it all in reverse order. Sometimes you have to do this several times before it "catches". This is a pain in the fundament, so we decided to just remove it altogether and put the credit card server in its place. (It's a known malfunction of some Dell desktops; cure is to change the PS and/or MB, and it's not worth it.)
Now the credit card server was slow as molasses. Nobody knew why; it has the fastest CPU of all the three, but anything involving disk access took forever. (It's a PATA drive on a MB which has both PATA and SATA controllers. 32-bit disk access was disabled; enabling that got it a *little* faster, but not much. I even checked to see if the drive was jumpered wrong, but it's set right.)
So when we moved it, we were bracing himself for having a really slow computer for our workstation, but for whatever reason, in its new location it's as fast as it should have been on the other side of the room. Everything's the same, except that we're using the USB mouse from the erstwhile workstation instead of the old PS/2 mouse that shipped with the CCserver.
What gives? Why would changing from a PS/2 to a USB mouse speed up the computer so much?
(It's also plugged into a different monitor and a different Ethernet port, but that shouldn't matter either. Only other difference is that it's got a few more inches vertical clearance in the new location, but I'd have noticed if it was overheating where it had been, and even then it would have started out at full speed and slowed as it got warmer. I don't even know if it's equipped to throttle the CPU per temperature anyway.)
Background: We have three computers in the pharmacy work area. One's the server, which runs both the server and client for the pharmacy software; the next is a workstation, which runs only the client, and the third until now sat under the back counter, and maintained the SQL server and data files for the stored credit cards (because they have to be on a separate machine from the server). Recently machine #2 has begun refusing to boot from shutdown; only way to do it is to remove AC power and the CMOS battery, unplug all USB devices, wait until the caps drain, and then reassemble it all in reverse order. Sometimes you have to do this several times before it "catches". This is a pain in the fundament, so we decided to just remove it altogether and put the credit card server in its place. (It's a known malfunction of some Dell desktops; cure is to change the PS and/or MB, and it's not worth it.)
Now the credit card server was slow as molasses. Nobody knew why; it has the fastest CPU of all the three, but anything involving disk access took forever. (It's a PATA drive on a MB which has both PATA and SATA controllers. 32-bit disk access was disabled; enabling that got it a *little* faster, but not much. I even checked to see if the drive was jumpered wrong, but it's set right.)
So when we moved it, we were bracing himself for having a really slow computer for our workstation, but for whatever reason, in its new location it's as fast as it should have been on the other side of the room. Everything's the same, except that we're using the USB mouse from the erstwhile workstation instead of the old PS/2 mouse that shipped with the CCserver.
What gives? Why would changing from a PS/2 to a USB mouse speed up the computer so much?
(It's also plugged into a different monitor and a different Ethernet port, but that shouldn't matter either. Only other difference is that it's got a few more inches vertical clearance in the new location, but I'd have noticed if it was overheating where it had been, and even then it would have started out at full speed and slowed as it got warmer. I don't even know if it's equipped to throttle the CPU per temperature anyway.)
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