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  1. I checked the DMA status via device manager last night and under Device 1 for my Primary IDE Channel the Current Transfer Mode: PIO so I changed it to DMA if available and rebooted. Tried a burn and it went fine but the user read buffer never was fully up to 100% and my other buffer still jumped around a lot (versus the burns coming off the C drive that were always up in the 95%s and above on both buffers). Took about 18 mins, still over the right time but at least it burned successfully.
    I'll check my Nero settings tonight as well.

    Also as a sidenote, I believe there was a prompt you could enter in RUN or DOS that checks your ram. scansomething? Does anyone remember, or maybe im just thinking things up again. Thought id give that a try as well.
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  2. Member GKar's Avatar
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    Best way to fix a DMA problem is go to the device tree and remove the ide controller(s) and then reboot. You may want to go into your BIOS and make sure everything is showing as DMA there also. Also make sure you are using the default generic Microsoft ide drivers even if you have to select them manually.

    The scan-something-or-other, did you mean scanreg?


    Just out of curiosity, when you first bootup, how much free ram do you have?

    ctr-alt-del, select performance tab



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  3. Yes it might have been scanreg. im not sure, it was scansomething i think. It was suppose to scan through your ram and see if there was a faulty chip or something?

    Both Device Manager and Nero Infotools is shows DMA mode/DMA on for all devices.

    Here is my performance upon startup. yet now, about 5 mins after first starting up. the CPU usage has gone down significantly and isn't doing the big jumps...


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  4. So Im thinking at this point my D Drive may have jumped to a PIO setting. I've gone into device manager and changed it to DMA from PIO and it was fine last night. But tonight, the D Drive keeps stalling and then disappearing from my windows explorer. And oddly enough now that the D Drive has disappeared from explorer, my computer seems to run much faster (good for my system, not for me as all my files are on that drive)

    when you say
    Best way to fix a DMA problem is go to the device tree and remove the ide controller(s) and then reboot.
    do you mean choose uninstall from the device manager and then once i reboot it should just automatically regroup after startup?
    Under IDE ATA/ATAPI Controllers I have:
    Primary IDE Channel
    Secondary IDE Channel
    Standard Dual Channel PCI IDE Controller

    do i need to uninstall the controller as well?
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    Looks like PC setup related.

    Remove Primary and Secondary IDE Controller (you can remove whatever else you want if in doubt), reboot.
    Reinstall your chipset/busmastering driver - motherboard drivers!!!
    Consider reinstalling Windows on top of existing one (repair).
    Try another software (similar behavior?).
    Test the DVD-RW drive in another system (best).
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  6. Member GKar's Avatar
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    The controller to remove (then reboot) was the standard dual pci controller (microsoft driver, good, continue to use it), primary/secondary are part of it. They will regroup after a reboot.

    You may benefit from putting the 2nd hard disk (d: drive) on the secondary ide controller, maybe as a slave drive to your Nec 1300a. It may be conflicting with your c: drive. I'm not exactly sure what your hardware setup is.

    Contrary to what inXess says, avoid using the chipset/busmastering ide drivers unless Windows XP cannot provide a driver for it (unkown device, etc...), my experience has been non-microsoft motherboard specific chipset/busmastering ide drivers can actually reduce performance and increase problems relating to dvd burning, especially with Nero products.

    Looks like you have plenty of ram available (600+ megs), but you show high cpu usage so you must have a lot of stuff loaded into memory and running. If you notice (the system graphic) we both have 1 gigabyte of ram, but I have a lot more available than you. You have a lot more processes running. The drop in cpu usage after 5 minutes from startup probably means you have a bunch of programs like windows update, antivirus etc ..trying to automatically update themselves, running up your cpu usage.
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  7. Video Restorer lordsmurf's Avatar
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    Originally Posted by GKar
    Contrary to what inXess says, avoid using the chipset/busmastering ide drivers unless Windows XP cannot provide a driver for it (unkown device, etc...), my experience has been non-microsoft motherboard specific chipset/busmastering ide drivers can actually reduce performance and increase problems relating to dvd burning, especially with Nero products.
    I can attest to this!
    My VIA-based KT600-A board is a piece of shit. I have this problem on that computer.

    In another computer, my NEC 1100A-hacked-to-1300A works fine.
    Want my help? Ask here! (not via PM!)
    FAQs: Best Blank DiscsBest TBCsBest VCRs for captureRestore VHS
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  8. Originally Posted by GKar
    The controller to remove (then reboot) was the standard dual pci controller (microsoft driver, good, continue to use it), primary/secondary are part of it. They will regroup after a reboot.

    You may benefit from putting the 2nd hard disk (d: drive) on the secondary ide controller, maybe as a slave drive to your Nec 1300a. It may be conflicting with your c: drive. I'm not exactly sure what your hardware setup is.
    So just uninstall the standard dual pci controller, don't botther with the primary/secondary, then reboot and hopefully after the reboot it should be fine?

    my computer went through about 6 reboots last night (freezing, stalling, freezing, my D drive disappeared from my explorer) before it seemed to be working properly. At this point I'm close to just taking out my main hard drive and putting in the seagate I had bought. In doing that will I still have to mess with the IDE/DMA stuff or should the new drive and install hopefully reset everything?

    my hardware setup is the 2 hard drive on primary and the 2 dvd drives on secondary. It's always been that way and hasn't given me a problem in the last 4 years, so weird that it's acting up now.
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  9. Member GKar's Avatar
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    Yes, just remove the Standard Dual PCI IDE Controller and reboot.

    It's tough to "remote" troubleshoot via website postings, very slow ....

    It's possible that you have a hard disk crapping out on you. What you can do to narrow down probems is to pull the cables off the questionable drive, leaving the drive in place, pull the power and ide cable off the hard drive in question and see how the system functions, if good, then swap (via cable and jumper) your secondary hard drive and one of your dvd drives making sure you have master/slave set correctly. Also you can go into your BIOS and see if you have SMART enabled which can help warn you of hard disk failures.

    Until your next post...
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  10. Well did the uninstall on the IDE controller. Rebooted and it showed it "adding new hardware" of the primary and secondary controllers. Have yet to test out a burn because the lag on my computer keeps getting worse. I can't even open up Nero, or attempt to open up any program without my computer going into a freeze for a long period of time. It'll then work okay, until I try to even do anything, even something simple like open up a webpage, then it'll freeze up again. Then I just have to sit and wait till it unfreezes, if i'm lucky; else it just beeps at me and i get to power down and start up the system manually.
    Yea, im just at the point where I want to say fawk it and replace the hard drive and start anew if you will.
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  11. DVD Ninja budz's Avatar
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    Have you ever considered testing your hard drive because it could be failing. If you know the brand of your hard drive go to the manufacturers website and download their tools to test the hard drive. I had to replace a 250gb sata hard drive last month and I only had it for less than a year. So it's possible for a hard drive to begin failing.
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    Despite being outnumbered I still stand by what I said. Fix your Windows first (freeze-ups) and then address your other problems not the other way around. Good luck.

    PS. what budz wrote is a possibility: file system corruption. Run respective tools to check.
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  13. so it seems my D drive keeps defaulting to PIO mode. The computer freezes, then the D drive disappears from my windows explorer. I scan for a drive in my device manager and it finds it, but then it's in PIO mode. I uninstalled the controller and rebooted and it was readded and back in DMA mode, but then it rebeats the freezing and disappearing process again.
    Is there something in my computer that would keep defaulting the D drive to PIO mode?

    seems when the D drive is gone from my explorer my computer runs well, but Id really like to ad least have it last long enough so that I can back up the files.
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  14. DVD Ninja budz's Avatar
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    If "D" is your hard drive then TEST IT WITH TOOLS that can detect whether or not the hard drive is FAILING. As I mentioned find out the manufacturer of your hard drive then find their website and download the tools to test it out.
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  15. Well its a Western Digital and I still have the CD it came with. But the diagnostic program only gives me these options:
    * VIEW INSTALLATION TUTORIAL - Instructions on how to connect your new hard drive to the computer.
    * SETUP YOUR HARD DRIVE - Setup a hard drive already connected to your computer.
    * DRIVE-TO-DRIVE COPY - Copy all the files or a specific folder from one drive to another.
    * HARD DRIVE INFORMATION - Jumper Settings and other technical information about your hard drive.

    I bought another Hard Drive so if this HD is failing I'll replace it, but I can't seem to be able to burn dvds off of it because it keeps defaulting to PIO, so I'd just like to copy folders over to my C drive so I can make backup dvds. Yet when I try to copy over, its slow, then it tells me it cant find the file. Because the D drive keeps disappearing. It reappears again later, but the disappearing breaks my copy
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    WD has drive test tool on their website. Feel free to get it.
    http://support.wdc.com/download/index.asp?swid=1
    It's Data Lifeguard. Next time think Seagate.
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  17. I have 2 seagates waiting in a boxes.
    managed to get my D drive to be able to copy files over to my C drive without it disappearing. Don't know how it's decided to cooperate, but it is. Its still in PIO and very slow, but at least I can copy them over and backup to RWs from my C drive. Once that's done i'm replacing my main drive with seagate, then if necessary the 2nd drive as well. If that still doesn't work I don't know anymore.
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  18. DVD Ninja budz's Avatar
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    Originally Posted by Angela627
    I have 2 seagates waiting in a boxes.
    managed to get my D drive to be able to copy files over to my C drive without it disappearing. Don't know how it's decided to cooperate, but it is. Its still in PIO and very slow, but at least I can copy them over and backup to RWs from my C drive. Once that's done i'm replacing my main drive with seagate, then if necessary the 2nd drive as well. If that still doesn't work I don't know anymore.
    Don't understand why you just didn't test your drive with the DATALIFE TOOL from Western Digital. If your WD still had a warranty left you could have gotten the drive replaced by WD. You've gotten advice from others and yet it seems you don't want to test that "D" drive with a tool that will tell you if the drive is failing.
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  19. i have the diagnostic tool, and its opened but I dont see a test tool?
    dled the Data Lifeguard from the website and its the same program that came with the CD, hence the same 4 options.

    i also tried to scandisk it and after running through it, windows keeps telling me unable to scandisck

    the drive is pretty old, I dont think it would fall under warranty anymore. I know its at least 3 years old, if not older.
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  20. DVD Ninja budz's Avatar
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    Originally Posted by Angela627
    i have the diagnostic tool, and its opened but I dont see a test tool?
    dled the Data Lifeguard from the website and its the same program that came with the CD, hence the same 4 options.

    i also tried to scandisk it and after running through it, windows keeps telling me unable to scandisck

    the drive is pretty old, I dont think it would fall under warranty anymore. I know its at least 3 years old, if not older.
    http://support.wdc.com/download/?cxml=n&pid=999&swid=3

    Did you use the above link? I installed datalife tool on this pc that has no WD hard drives. It's pretty self explanatory when the tool is opened up. Take a look at that link. I'm sure this datalife download is totally different from the WD cd that you have especially when you said the drive is over 3 years old.
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  21. data lifeguard tools or data lifeguard diagnostic?
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  22. DVD Ninja budz's Avatar
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    data lifeguard diagnostic
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  23. dled the diagnostic and ran it. so far the quick scan shows no failures. Have yet to do the extended scan, still in process of doing backups. But yea, as far as diagnostic goes, its telling me my D drive is fine...
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  24. DVD Ninja budz's Avatar
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    good you got it going. do the extended scan when time permits for you.
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  25. okay, so under properties for "Health Status" it does show my WD as "warning" yet oddly enough its also showing it as SATA. As far as I know, my drive is IDE, with the large ribbon.
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  26. DVD Ninja budz's Avatar
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    you may have to use the DATA LIFEGUARD DIAGNOSTICS for DOS (FLOPPY). this is what the floppy verison says:

    Description:
    The Data Lifeguard Diagnostic Tools are used primarily for determining the physical condition of your hard drive. If you are having computer problems which you suspect are hard drive related, you can test your drive with this tool. This diagnostic utility is designed for hard drives larger than 8.4 GB with the model number starting with WDxxx.


    http://support.wdc.com/download/?cxml=n&pid=4&swid=2

    i've always tested my hard drives using the floppy disc method and just did one using the cd method to test a friends hard drive.
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    Do the full/extended test. These tools (full test) nicely recover the drive. If still unsure about the drive, backup all the data and use "fill/write drive with zeros". It will wipe the drive clean and bring it back to like new condition recoverng bad areas or making them properly. This way I recovered drives that were ready for replacement due to some inconsistencies. That's how HDD manuf. treat drives as well.
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  28. Member Timoleon's Avatar
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    Concerning your NEC 1300A burner ---

    Have you tried cleaning it with one of those kits you can buy at Best Buy or WalMart. I had an NEC 1300A that benefited from a cleaning before it finally crapped out after a couple of years --- it may be worth trying before you ditch it.

    Although it does seem to me from reading this thread that your problem lies elsewhere
    "I'm sick of paying for dinner and being served cowshit, while they give the bums eating out of the garbage my meal."
    --- D. P. Smith
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  29. did the full extended test and it came out as a pass. Ended up replacing my main Maxtor 60gb with a new seagate 120gb and new ide cables. Did a test burn off the D drive and came out fine. So now it's the process of reinstalling all my programs... Not fun, but at least all seems to be working.
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  30. Member GKar's Avatar
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    Glad to hear the nightmare is over for you. You might want to pick up a copy of Acronis or Norton Ghost or some other imaging software so you can backup your system. You can burn a copy of your image to a DVD also in case of another hard disk problem. In a few moments you could be up and running instead of the dreaded reload.
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