ConvertxtoDVD encodes fine in past, now very slow

[brdhsby5]

I was using convertxtodvd in the past to create dvds and the encode speed was fairly fast (3 hours for whole dvd) with default settings on encoding (normal rate) now when i use it to convert it is too slow almost too slow to encode anything as it would take litterally the whole day. is there something i can do to fix this problem? i done stuff like defrag and virus/malware trojan scan with no bad results, cleaned registry with a cleaner, and used ccleaner so far, and may hd have enough space over 10 gb.

[guns1inger]

I would

1. Try uninstalling ConvertXtoDVD, cleaning the registry, rebooting, then installing it again. Maybe even look at using Revo Uninstaller to do the uninstall, just to be sure.

2, Check that your HDD is running in DMA mode, and not PIO mode. Right-Click My Computer and select Manage from the menu. Click on Device Manager, then expand the IDE branch. Check the properties on all your IDE controllers. If something is attached then it should be running in DMA mode. If it is running in PIO mode then you have two issues. One, it will be incredibly slow (all disk access will be slow, so you should notice this in everything you do), and the second issue is that the HDD may not be a happy camper.

Start with the simple (uninstall/reinstall), then move on to the complex only if necessary.

[Forum Troll]

You might also consider upgrading the RAM in your computer. My new laptop encodes at 4X real speed with 4 GB ram, whereas my old laptop averaged about half normal speed, and had just 1 GB RAM.

[brdhsby5]

Did what you said and found out my secondary IDE channel is running under PIO when i click > advance settings tab > device 0 > transfer mode it says DMA if available, but the next line under it says current transfer as PIO mode. There is no pull down menu to change this DMA. All my other channels were under DMA.

[redwudz]

You can do this to change to DMA:

To check DMA/PIO mode within Windows:

Control Panel>System>Hardware>Device Manager>IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers.

From there, right click on one of the channels and choose 'Properties>Advanced Settings'. All drives should be DMA mode. The 'Current Transfer Mode' for Hard drives is usually DMA 4-6 and DVD burners DMA 2-4, DVD ROMs usually DMA 2. If you see any in PIO mode, that can slow things down.

Changing them back may be easy or complicated. First see if you can change them in that window. If not, I usually uninstall the channel the drive is on and let the OS reinstall it. This will usually take a reboot. This will not damage any files on the computer.

[brdhsby5]

my hard drive is still acesses slow, is there anyway to fix this,(like the dvd encoding) beside re-formating?

[Ai Haibara]

Like Forum Troll mentioned, consider upgrading your RAM. 512MB is actually considered the minimum amount of RAM you should have for XP. Also, right-click the My Computer icon on the desktop and check the properties to see if Windows is actually seeing all of it.

So your HD ran faster before than it is, now? It probably couldn't hurt to run a chkdsk/disk check on it, too.