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I'm running Windows 2000 Pro on a DELL Dimension XPS T800r PIII 800mhz with 640MB RAM, whenever I use NERO to burn data or audio, it starts out fine, but after about 45 seconds the buffer drops down to 0% for a split second, then jumps back up, it might do that twice during a burn, I have DMA enabled and I also have a Pioneer 16X DVD Slot CD-ROM drive connected as SLAVE, but both drives have DMA enabled, but I keep getting these buffer drops intermittently thoughout the burn, CD's seem okay, but if I multitask, its seems to just be slow, almost like the burn is taking up too much of the CPU. Any ideas? The CPU should be fast enough for burning I would think. 640MB should be more than plenty? I also disabled my Norton 2003 anti-virus, doesn't help. Thanks!

Welcome to CDRLabs!

Thank you for checking to make sure that DMA is on. However, have you checked if DMA is enabled on your hard drive(s)?

Try removing the DVD to see if the problem goes away. You can monitor CPU usage during the burn, but it's more likely an IDE issue. I assume that you're talking about the read-buffer when you say it's dropping? That means the data is not getting read fast enough, so something is interfering.
do you have anything like Go-Back running?

Yes, the hard drive has DMA enabled (of course!), but I will remove the DVD drive to see if that helps, I'll also try selecting CABLE SELECT instead of SLAVE on the DVD drive. Hmm..thanks for your help!