Nero 6 burns twice as slow suddenly

[ssalim]

Hi,

Just 2 or 3 days ago, Nero (version 6.6.0.15) burns twice as slow. 4x dvd needs 33 minutes where it's used to take about 17-18. The buffer level is fluctuating and no other application is running.

Could it be the cheap dvd I use? but they were fine and I've used these cheap dvds for 2 months.
Could it be the dvd-writer getting old and needs replacement or firmware update?
Could it be a virus or some kind?

I have sent the cache to 250MB of hard disk space and use 80MB of buffer (I changed from automatic to manual).

Thanks!

[ssalim]

^Bump
Can anyone help? Have to burn at 2x speed -- which is faster now (28 minutes vs 33 minutes at 4x speed).
This sucks.

[jyn999]

What bit rate is Nero claiming to write at?

[redwudz]

It could be your burner was reset to PIO mode.

You can check it in 'Control Panel>System>Hardware>Device Manager>IDE/ATAPI Controllers. None of the channels should be in PIO mode. They should be DMA 2 or higher. Uninstall the channel that's in PIO and reboot.

[oldandinthe way]

I think redwudz has got it.

A risk of unreliable media is that when nero encounters an error it switches to PIO mode to attept a retry and after it fails the drive is left in po mode..

[ssalim]

Yes, the secondary IDE channel's device 0 uses PIO mode.
I changed the Transfer mode from "PIO only" to "DMA if available".
Clicked OK, restarted, but it still says PIO mode.

How do I change it back to DMA?
How do I uninstall PIO?

Thanks.

[ssalim]

Got it. A simple search from google finds this article.
http://sniptools.com/tipstricks/getting-back-to-dma-mode-in-windows-xp

Thanks, all!

[redwudz]

You can do it that way per the link, but first I would just uninstall the IDE channel that has defaulted to PIO. Right click on the channel and select 'uninstall', reboot and you are done. The OS will reinstall the channel and reset to DMA with no damage or data loss, even on the boot drive channel. If that doesn't work, then the registry fix is next.

BTW, if a DVD drive performs 6 consecutive tries to read a disc and fails, the OS automatically reverts it to PIO mode in a attempt to continue reading the data. It is a questionable 'feature' of Windows. Unfortunately it doesn't 'auto-reset', so you have to do that manually. If your optical drive slows down suddenly, it's the first thing you want to check.