CD-RW/DVDRW drives won't work in DMA mode

[UCLAPat]

Windows XP Pro with SP2
Zonealarm Pro 5.5
Kaspersky AV
AthlonXP 2200+
Abit NF7-S2G motherboard

Hi. I've recently been unable to read any media (both real and burned) in either of my CDRW and DVDRW drives (set as slave and master, respectively) on the secondary IDE channel. I was trying to diagnose the problem and switched the DMA setting for the secondary IDE channel from "DMA if available" to "PIO only". Suddenly, the drives worked again at reading any media. However, PIO mode is dog slow and I can't do anything else while the drive is being accessed. If I switch back to DMA mode, the drives stop reading media. When in DMA mode, the current transfer mode shows "Ultra DMA Mode 2".

I've tried changing the IDE cable. I've tried isolating each drive as its own master (and disconnecting the other drive). Nothing works except in PIO mode. Everything looks proper in the BIOS. In fact, I haven't changed anything in the BIOS from when the drives did work in DMA mode. Again, the drives use to work fine in DMA mode and now they don't.

Can anyone help me? PIO is killing me...

 

[LTC8K6]

Try uninstalling the controller from Device Manager and letting XP redetect it.

 

[UCLAPat]

Thanks for replying. Yes, I tried uninstalling the controller and the secondary IDE channel and having the system redetect upon reboot. Still the same problem.

 

[crice]

Did you try putting any of the devices on the primary IDE chain?

 

[FlyingPenguin]

You have two devices on the secondary IDE port right? Have you tried connecting only one? Could be a hardware issue with one that's affecting the other.

 

[spacelord]

Maybe this is your problem. I ran into this last week, and fixed it using the registry method described here.

DMA reverts to PIO

 

[UCLAPat]

Well, I have 2 HD's daisychained on the primary IDE channel and 2 CDRW/DVDRW drives daisychained on the secondary channel.

Should I disconnect the slave HD to connect the CDRW or DVDRW?

Thanks for helping!

 

[UCLAPat]

Originally posted by: FlyingPenguin
You have two devices on the secondary IDE port right? Have you tried connecting only one? Could be a hardware issue with one that's affecting the other.

Yes, I've tried to isolate the drives (either running just the CDRW as master or just the DVDRW as the master). To no avail. *sigh*

Thanks for helping!

 

[UCLAPat]

Originally posted by: spacelord
Maybe this is your problem. I ran into this last week, and fixed it using the registry method described here.

DMA reverts to PIO

Hey! I saw that article before coming to this forum (was searching for an hour on google). I tried it and it didn't help. Maybe I did it wrong. I'll try again soon. Thanks for the help!

 

[UCLAPat]

Just tried the registry trick. Sorry, no good.

Maybe it's just a bad motherboard... Ionno...

 

[jackschmittusa]

I would try "update driver" on the ide controller and see if it will take the driver again from the cd. If there is a newer driver, try that.