PIO and DMA troubles

[McFlid]

I am running Win 2000 on an XP2000 with 256mb RAM and was suffering from slow burning speeds on my Lite-on LTR 52327s and slow DVD ripping speeds on my LG GDR 8161B.

In both cases it was buffer under runs or overflows as the main cause. Both of these problems were fixed by switching from PIO to DMA mode on both devices.

This had no drawbacks for the LG drive but all the while the Lite-on drive remains in DMA mode it refuses to read any EXE, RAR or AVI files etc, claiming them to be corrupt, damaged or "not a Win32 Application". Simple files like TXT may still be read however. If swiched back to PIO the drive works correctly at the expence of writing speeds.

Both drives are wired on the same Secondary IDE Channel

Any ideas would be greatly appreciated.

Cheers

[dodecahedron]

really weird.

maybe try playing around with the hardware setup:
exchange master/slave, primary/secondary IDE channel positioning of the drives.
change cables.

[Gilbert]

A shot in the dark... Is your drive connected to an onboard ATA controller or to a separate controller in a PCI slot? Is your mb BIOS the latest? If a separate controller, are the BIOS and driver the latest versions?

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Gilbert

[McFlid]

All of my drives are connected to my ECS K7VTA3 3.1a ATA Controller. I have been to the ECS website to check for updates for my bios and the only listed fix was related to a Wake on LAN feature. I never really liked the idea of flashing a BIOS without a solid reason.

On the hardware setup side of things i'll try swapping the Jumpers on the drives. U never know till u try.

My system is in need of a Format & Re-install anyway, i'll get round to that in a week or so and i'll let u know how things go.

Thanks for all ur ideas, keep 'em coming

McFlid

[McFlid]

I've tried the drive now as a Slave and a single master without any change in charactoristics.
I have also booted my computer using an old Win98SE installation with again, identical problems.
Should i send this drive back do u think?
Always open to ideas.

Cheers
Mcflid

[Gilbert]

Mistakes are easy to make but have you jumpered the drives' slave/master/cable select settings?

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Gilbert

[McFlid]

I've also tried reversing the Master/Slave relationship of the drives. Currently the LG is the master with identical problems.

[McFlid]

The problem was the Ultra DMA Mode. I downloaded the VIA MiniPort Driver from

http://www.viaarena.com/?PageID=66

and set the Drive to Ultra DMA mode 1 instead of 2. Everything now works perfectly.
Thanks for all your ideas, i hope others find this helpful.

Best Regards

J Hart