DMA/ PIO Problems

[bignjhammer]

I have what seems to be a common problem with 4x burning on my Pioneer a05. Basically burns are really slow. After reading some other posts, people make reference to the dma/pio thing in device manager. For My A05 it is set to use DMA if available(or something like it) but under current transfer mode is set to PIO and it is unchangeable!

Ive removed the IDE controllers and rebooted with the same results.

With Nero, I also have problems with the buffer going wacky all over the place although never to zero. And when it is reading from the hard drive , I only get read speeds of 2.9 or 3X.

Its a pretty new machine P4 2.7ghx with 640mg of ram and 60 HD

What the hell is going on? Please help me![/b]

[Gazorgan]

That will happen if you have another PIO mode drive attached (like say, a CDRW? or older HD) on the same cable. It can also happen if you older 40 pin cables (as opposed to the new 80 pin).

Make sure your mobo bios is up to date, older bios can be fickle on DMA mode, especially with DVD drives.

[bignjhammer]

Thanks, Ill check the bios for the motherboard.
I have a Lite-on DVDrom as the master on the same cable as the A05. I believe the Lite-On is set for DMA.

[pSYCHOdAD]

I had the same problem under WinXP. Seems like I updated the mobo drivers and that did the trick. I think I installed Intel's Application Accelerator which had new controller drivers. I have an Intel chipset, yours may of course, be different. Check on your chipset's mfgr's site for updated drivers.

[bignjhammer]

Weel the problem is fixed. The BIOS didnt need updating. But in the BIOS the slave on the the secondary IDE channel was turned to OFF. Tahts why I couldnt change the PIO to DMA. Anyway it now works the way its supposedto. Burn a DVD in 15-16 minutes.

Thanks for the advice