Can anyone help me with this. For some reason, whenever I use my cd writer I seem to be using all my machines resources. If I read an image, write an image or copy on fly, the writer seems to use all the systems resources and causes major slowdown.
This problem was never there before, I used to be able to do anything with my burner whilst surfin web, watching vcd and slowdown was never a factor.
Now if Im online a page takes an eternity to load, it even disconnects me sometimes, if Im typing in word or an email it takes like 3 secs for the letter to appear. It seems that if I'm using my writer at all, there are no resources left to do anything else.

It all started from when I tried to change the IDE set up. I read on here that a better set up than what I had would be to have my Primary IDE's master as HDD and slave as DVD ROM. Then Secondary IDE have my writer as master.
I did all this, changed the jumpers, adjusted the BIOS etc. but for some reason the machine wouldnt accept it. Sometimes it would start and not recognise drives, sometimes it wouldnt start at all.
I decided to change back to my old set up, the way I had it b4 I changed with Primary master as HDD, Sec master as DVD and slave etc.

There was another major issue started after this but thru help from on here got it sorted :) and its irrelevant to the writer issue.

I ended up after all the carry on trying to get old set up back by installing XP over 98 and adding an extra 30Gb HDD as slave. everything was brand new for a while but now my writer has gone back to its old tricks, using all the resources, stopppin me from doing anything else really whilst reading or burning.

My system isnt the fastest in the world but it done the job fine for my needs until this crap started:
P3 800
320 MB 133
Abit VL6 MOBO
GeForce 2 MX 400
30Gb IBM HDD (Prim Master)
30Gb Maxtor HDD (Prim Slave)
Hitachi 16x DVD ROM (Sec Master)
Lite-On 24102B Writer (Sec Slave)
Win XP Pro
Clone CD 4 and Nero 5.5.9.0 Only


Im lookin to upgrade it v.soon but ANY help in why my writer is causing this crap just now is greatly appreciated. Or any tips on setup in general as I know I aint getting what I should be out of the system. The 2 HDDs have managed to find themselved full of the biggest load of crap.
Thx in advance ;)

Check the Burner's properties in Hardware Profile. Make sure that you have DMA and Disconnect enabled. This should lighten the load the burner is creating on your system

Moving to CDRW forum...

This is really lame and something I had no probs doing using 98 but how do I get to the hardware profile where I can enable/disable DMA etc in XP Pro?
I've been to Hardware Profiles thru System Properties and all I have is Profile 1 (Current).
If I try it thru Device manager I cant find it. Can sum1 point me in the right direction.
Cheers.

NP m8, go into device manager and click on "IDE controllers", Primary + secondary and you will see there if "Ultra DMA Mode 2" is enabled for your CD/DVD devices. XP should auto assign UDMA 2 to these devices but sometimes it can set them to PIO so just change them to UDMA 2 if that happens.

Lazza, thx for that m8, looks like I'm on my way to fixin it. On Sec IDE both Device 0 and Device 1 were set to PIO only. It only allows me to change it to "DMA if available" which I have done for both, but below each it says "Current Transfer Mode" and in both even after changing it still says "PIO Mode"??

Is it just a case of having to restart to make settings take effect.

On Primary IDE, Device 0 & 1 were set to DMA if available and in "Current Transfer mode" they both say "Ultra DMA Mode 3". I presume this is correct, yes?

Will try restarting now and check if Secondary changes take effect.

Many thx for ur help m8. :cheers:

Nope, restarted and its the same. Still set at DMA if available but the Current transfer Mode is still at PIO Mode.

Need to try burnin now, see what the score is.

What exactly is pio? I've got an old NEC 28x cdrom drive that runs pio.

"PAIN IN ORIFICE" m8 :laugh:

I have no idea but that is what my conclusion is!! :D

Still got same prob with slowdown. As i said, it is now set as DMA if available on both DVD and writer but in Current Transfer mode it is still set at PIO mode, though it's still set at DMA If Available.
Anyone know how to get rid of this damn PIO mode as I still have total slowdown when reading or writing? Cheers m8s ;)

Lazza, Darkman, anyone? Still got same problemo!
How do I get the "Current Transfer Mode" to change to DMA? Any ideas ppl? :)

Sorry M8 I've stayed away from XP, is it just me or do successive generations of windoze become less user friendly?.

These Tomes of wisdom from micr$oft may help http://www.microsoft.com/hwdev/tech/storage/IDE-DMA.asp


To enable DMA mode using the Device Manager

Open Device Manager.
Double-click IDE ATA/ATAPI Controllers to display the list of controllers and channels.
Right-click the icon for the channel to which the device is connected, select Properties, and then click the Advanced Settings tab.
In the Current Transfer Mode drop-down box, select DMA if Available if the current setting is "PIO Only."
If the drop-down box already shows "DMA if Available" but the current transfer mode is PIO, then the user must toggle the settings. That is:
Change the selection from "DMA if available" to PIO only, and click OK.
Then repeat the steps above to change the selection to DMA if Available.


Which I gather to mean, if DMA is turned on & doesn't work then turn it off then on again!.

hth

Cool m8, thx for finding that out for me, sounds promisin.

Surprise, surprise, didn't work. I have tried every possible combination of things and I still am on PIO Mode.
Noticed a bit up the article this bit:
Windows XP will turn off DMA mode for a device after encountering certain errors during data transfer operations. If more that six DMA transfer timeouts occur, Windows will turn off DMA and use only PIO mode on that device.
In this case, the user cannot turn on DMA for this device. The only option for the user who wants to enable DMA mode is to uninstall and reinstall the device.
Windows XP downgrades the Ultra DMA transfer mode after receiving more than six CRC errors. Whenever possible, the operating system will step down one UDMA mode at a time (from UDMA mode 4 to UDMA mode 3, and so on).
If the mini-IDE driver for the device does not support stepping down transfer modes, or if the device is running UDMA mode 0, Windows XP will step down to PIO mode after encountering six or more CRC errors. In this case, a system reboot should restore the original DMA mode settings.
All CRC and timeout errors are logged in the system event log. These types of errors could be caused by improper mounting or improper cabling (for example, 40-pin instead of 80-pin cable). Or such errors could indicate imminent hardware failure, for example, in a hard drive or chipset

May I have to disconnect my writer and dvd, boot, then reconnect and boot to uninstall then install them?


For ATA or ATAPI devices that do not work properly in DMA mode.
Compatibility testing at Microsoft has shown that enabling DMA on certain drives could cause data corruption or reduced system stability. There is no way for the user to enable DMA on these devices.

This cant be the case as I know they were running fine before. Using 98 I was able to enable and disable DMA on both. On XP it ran fine so they must be compatible?


AAAAAARGGHHH!!!!

move back to win98...i know a lot of peeps have trouble with burning and XP my mate has a machine with exactly the same symptoms as you and he's running an athlon 1400...so it;s not a system fault

But it did work absolutely perfect when I first installed XP, may even have been a little quicker.
Should I perhaps reinstsall XP?

It sounds like your system is logging DMA errors which would explain why it worked at first but doesn't now. Re-installing XP will probably reset these error logs but I suspect it wount be too long before XP starts downgrading the burner back to PIO mode.


Try removing the burner and re-installing

May I have to disconnect my writer and dvd, boot, then reconnect and boot to uninstall then install them?
- this sounds like a good idea to me.

I don't know if it's going to be a permanent solution though.

What I think Im gonna do is install 98 and reinstall XP Pro and have a dual boot.
But as I said, when I installed XP, writer worked fine.

This old topic may come back into play:

http://www.cdrom-guide.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&postid=1189294#post1189294

Any ideas??