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Multi-word DMA mode 2

PostPosted: Mon Jun 23, 2003 2:05 am
by Nudicles
Hi

I've been searching endlessly for a solution to my HD problem, and I came across an answer on this forum. Only, it didn't seem to work for me, so I just wanted to see if any of you came up with a solution since that thread...

To be more specific...

I've used a 40 gig WD harddrive for a while, for the past few months after installing my new Gigabyte GA-7VAXP mobo, I noticed my HD running in multi-word DMA mode 2. I tried all the solutions I could find, nothing worked, so I figured it was a problem with the harddrive itself. So, I just recently purchased a Maxtor 160 gig 8mb cache (DiamondMax Plus 9), and sadly that did not fix the problem.

Updated to Windows XP SP1, newest VIA drivers (4.47) even installed the miniport drivers. Uninstall/reinstall the drive itself, as well as the IDE itself in the device manager, although that probably wouldn't have helped anyway since that would fix the problem only if XP had detected more than 7 or so errors with the drive (or so I've read)... and since the drive is brand new, that wouldn't make any sense...

Anyways, I've babbled on for too long. Any help would be appretiated.

Thanks,
Nudi

PostPosted: Mon Jun 23, 2003 2:17 am
by dodecahedron
check out the FAQ:
How to enable DMA in Windows XP (with pictures)
Problems enabling DMA in Windows XP

info on DMA, UDMA etc.:
What are DMA and UDMA ? especially the links at the last post.

PostPosted: Tue Jun 24, 2003 4:36 am
by blakerwry
On a VIA mobo, it's been my experience if you either 1) have UDMA disabled in the BIOS or 2) have the HDD set to none in the BIOS winXP will still detect the drive and set it to M/W DMA mode 2.

double chekc both these settings in your BIOS. im thinkking it's number 2.


If you can't find what im talking about, try setting BIOS to defaults.

PostPosted: Tue Jun 24, 2003 7:02 pm
by Nudicles
Hey, it worked :D

Played with bios, couldn't find anything wrong... so I just set it back to optimized defaults, and voila.

Thanks for the input

PostPosted: Fri Jun 27, 2003 7:45 pm
by blakerwry
cool.