DVD Won't Stay DMA Enabled!
I thought I would ask for fellow opinions on this. It's been driving me nuts for months. By the way, before I describe the problem, I should let you know that I've searched the forums and archives at and This problem seems to be somewhat common, yet nobody seems to have a permanent solution.
I thought I would ask for fellow opinions on this. It's been driving me nuts for months.
By the way, before I describe the problem, I should let you know that I've searched the forums and archives at http://www.ntcompatible.com and http://www.storagereview.com. This problem seems to be somewhat common, yet nobody seems to have a permanent solution.
The problem I described also occurred on old A7V. Hence, it is not particular to the Iwill board. Also, I have read about this problem occuring on motherboards that use Intel chipsets as well as Via chipsets.
Additional Environment Information beyond what is in my signature:
Primary IDE Master: Diamond Max Plus 40
Primary IDE Slave: None
Secondary IDE Master: Asus E608 DVD-ROM
Secondary Slave: None
The Problem:
My DVD drive won't stay DMA enabled, no matter what I try.
Win2K IDE Properties for Secondary IDE Master:
Use DMA if available
Current Mode for Secondary IDE Master:
PIO Mode
BIOS settings for Secondary IDE Master:
Auto
When I first set up the system, everything was hunky dory. For the first week, my DVD drive was showing up as being DMA enabled in Device Manager. The drive does support UDMA 2.
Then, for no apparent reason that I can tell, the DVD drive drops down to PIO Mode.
I have changed nothing in the BIOS. I have not changed any device drivers.
Why is the DMA setting relevant?
Many DVD software decoders won't work unless DMA is enabled. Hence, now that I've dropped down to PIO Mode, I can no longer play DVDs.
Things I've tried:
Moving the DVD drive to another plug on the IDE cable.
Result: nada
Changing the Bios to PNP Yes.
Result: zippo (I changed it back to No after this didn't work)
Removing the DVD-drive from the system. Let Win2K reboot without the device present Now add the drive back:
Result: bzzzt
Trying a different IDE cable:
Result: waah-waah
Flashing the DVD-ROM Bios:
Result: The problem went away for a while, but then came back.
Trying the 4.28 Bus Master drivers:
Result: All the expected 4.28 problems, and no resolution for my problems. I ripped the 4.28s out after that. Now running 4.25.
Some final notes:
Others on alternative forums also report this problem with Pioneer, Aopen, and possibly Creative drives, too. So the problem does not appear unique to Asus's DVD drives.
Windows 2000 boots faster now that the DVD is in PIO mode. I find this interesting, almost as if before, when DMA was working, it would spend a long time during boot up trying to decide if the DVD was DMA enabled or not.
I'm convinced at this point that W2K has some problems with DMA and DVD. I checked the SP2 fix list and saw nothing relevant.
I'd rather not get a SCSI DVD if I don't have to...
Please help. This is driving me crazy.
2D
By the way, before I describe the problem, I should let you know that I've searched the forums and archives at http://www.ntcompatible.com and http://www.storagereview.com. This problem seems to be somewhat common, yet nobody seems to have a permanent solution.
The problem I described also occurred on old A7V. Hence, it is not particular to the Iwill board. Also, I have read about this problem occuring on motherboards that use Intel chipsets as well as Via chipsets.
Additional Environment Information beyond what is in my signature:
Primary IDE Master: Diamond Max Plus 40
Primary IDE Slave: None
Secondary IDE Master: Asus E608 DVD-ROM
Secondary Slave: None
The Problem:
My DVD drive won't stay DMA enabled, no matter what I try.
Win2K IDE Properties for Secondary IDE Master:
Use DMA if available
Current Mode for Secondary IDE Master:
PIO Mode
BIOS settings for Secondary IDE Master:
Auto
When I first set up the system, everything was hunky dory. For the first week, my DVD drive was showing up as being DMA enabled in Device Manager. The drive does support UDMA 2.
Then, for no apparent reason that I can tell, the DVD drive drops down to PIO Mode.
I have changed nothing in the BIOS. I have not changed any device drivers.
Why is the DMA setting relevant?
Many DVD software decoders won't work unless DMA is enabled. Hence, now that I've dropped down to PIO Mode, I can no longer play DVDs.
Things I've tried:
Moving the DVD drive to another plug on the IDE cable.
Result: nada
Changing the Bios to PNP Yes.
Result: zippo (I changed it back to No after this didn't work)
Removing the DVD-drive from the system. Let Win2K reboot without the device present Now add the drive back:
Result: bzzzt
Trying a different IDE cable:
Result: waah-waah
Flashing the DVD-ROM Bios:
Result: The problem went away for a while, but then came back.
Trying the 4.28 Bus Master drivers:
Result: All the expected 4.28 problems, and no resolution for my problems. I ripped the 4.28s out after that. Now running 4.25.
Some final notes:
Others on alternative forums also report this problem with Pioneer, Aopen, and possibly Creative drives, too. So the problem does not appear unique to Asus's DVD drives.
Windows 2000 boots faster now that the DVD is in PIO mode. I find this interesting, almost as if before, when DMA was working, it would spend a long time during boot up trying to decide if the DVD was DMA enabled or not.
I'm convinced at this point that W2K has some problems with DMA and DVD. I checked the SP2 fix list and saw nothing relevant.
I'd rather not get a SCSI DVD if I don't have to...
Please help. This is driving me crazy.
2D
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Responses to this topic
Glad someone answered, because i'm experienceing the same trouble.
ASUS P4B533 board, using correct cables , ALL DRIVES, incl dvd burner stuck in PIO mode.
At first sp2 was to solve the issue as i read on a MS page, but that did jack all.
I tried a fix from another page, registry to delete the ide cache data for the ide channels, btw my ide 0000 is my ultra bus something, then i have pri and 2nd listed in device mgr, winxp pro btw.
I will give this a try
REGEDIT4
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\{4D36E96A-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}\0000]
"EnableUDMA66"=dword:00000000
"EnableUDMA100"=dword:00000001
as you suggested, hopefully it will work, this is a very advanced problem and i've made many poor decisions in my attempt to fix, I tried uninstalling the ultra dma and also pri and 2nd channels (ide) from device manager and of course then i'm doing a windows repair install, lots of fun. then i made another error, so i did another repair install this morning.
bios has been fully updated, and checked to see that dma modes are auto detected. also downloaded western digital drive tools to check the SMART on the drives (c pri is 40 gb and d is 60 gb)
MY SYSTEM WAS/HAS been overclocked.....2.4 ghz celeron to 3ghz
after all this fuss of troubleshooting i now suspect i might have actually damaged something which is limiting my drive speeds, possibly the bus? or chipset? is that possible? any help appreciated and I will monitor this thread so i can reply should anyone require more details.
after dumping the registry cached ide data for pri and secondary master and slave, on reboot, the drives still come up as PIO mode, but are preferenced at "DMA if available" horribly upsetting especially if my overclocking messed this. hard drives are master slaved and the dvd burner is on it's own channel.
when i think about the last time the drives were working fine in dma mode, it definitely was before the overclock and even after but i cannot confirm that, i just hope i didn't ruin my hardware, i'm putting my money on some silly config setting i missed in the bios and/or microsoft sucking.
thanks again.
ASUS P4B533 board, using correct cables , ALL DRIVES, incl dvd burner stuck in PIO mode.
At first sp2 was to solve the issue as i read on a MS page, but that did jack all.
I tried a fix from another page, registry to delete the ide cache data for the ide channels, btw my ide 0000 is my ultra bus something, then i have pri and 2nd listed in device mgr, winxp pro btw.
I will give this a try
REGEDIT4
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\{4D36E96A-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}\0000]
"EnableUDMA66"=dword:00000000
"EnableUDMA100"=dword:00000001
as you suggested, hopefully it will work, this is a very advanced problem and i've made many poor decisions in my attempt to fix, I tried uninstalling the ultra dma and also pri and 2nd channels (ide) from device manager and of course then i'm doing a windows repair install, lots of fun. then i made another error, so i did another repair install this morning.
bios has been fully updated, and checked to see that dma modes are auto detected. also downloaded western digital drive tools to check the SMART on the drives (c pri is 40 gb and d is 60 gb)
MY SYSTEM WAS/HAS been overclocked.....2.4 ghz celeron to 3ghz
after all this fuss of troubleshooting i now suspect i might have actually damaged something which is limiting my drive speeds, possibly the bus? or chipset? is that possible? any help appreciated and I will monitor this thread so i can reply should anyone require more details.
after dumping the registry cached ide data for pri and secondary master and slave, on reboot, the drives still come up as PIO mode, but are preferenced at "DMA if available" horribly upsetting especially if my overclocking messed this. hard drives are master slaved and the dvd burner is on it's own channel.
when i think about the last time the drives were working fine in dma mode, it definitely was before the overclock and even after but i cannot confirm that, i just hope i didn't ruin my hardware, i'm putting my money on some silly config setting i missed in the bios and/or microsoft sucking.
thanks again.
You might want to check out this MSKB article and at least check out the registry entries if not calling them for the hotfix as well.
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=817472
Also, I know there is another MSKB article along the lines of this next link, but I can't find it. It's a reghack I came up with a while back when I had some misbehaving hardware. It seems to resolve this issue, however some people have reported it resetting back to PIO after a reboot. Maybe it would have better luck being paired with the reghack from the previously linked MSKB article?
http://episteme.arstechnica.com/eve/ubb....8801#7230998801
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=817472
Also, I know there is another MSKB article along the lines of this next link, but I can't find it. It's a reghack I came up with a while back when I had some misbehaving hardware. It seems to resolve this issue, however some people have reported it resetting back to PIO after a reboot. Maybe it would have better luck being paired with the reghack from the previously linked MSKB article?
http://episteme.arstechnica.com/eve/ubb....8801#7230998801
It only gets worse.....lately since the return to normal celeron 2.4ghz speeds, the hard drives are extremely slow, to the point that windows takes a LONG time to boot, i'm suspecting hardware damage or maybe something with the partition headers? these are all guesses but i'm just frustrated with the whole situation, especially since i have a good computer background, ah well, i guess i'll keep reading.....seems either something mobo related or maybe the hdd's are just dying, they are sitting very close to each other and the heat might be a bit much.
when i returned home the other night it was a black screen and just said "press any key to reboot" that's it....no windows, nuthin.....but after scandisks and other checking software, all is fine, still in pio mode.
i've since pulled all ide and put the C drive only on the 2nd ide channel by it self, seems to work ok....i'll figure this out somehow.
DJB
when i returned home the other night it was a black screen and just said "press any key to reboot" that's it....no windows, nuthin.....but after scandisks and other checking software, all is fine, still in pio mode.
i've since pulled all ide and put the C drive only on the 2nd ide channel by it self, seems to work ok....i'll figure this out somehow.
DJB
