DVD/CD PIO Mode Only

[uzun]

I have a Dell XPS Gen 3 system with a 925X chipset. Throughout the life of the system I have had DMA mode 2 on both DVD drives in the case. They are both on the same controller, one as master one as slave. Recently I swapped out the slave drive and now the master stays in PIO mode regardless of what I do. I have tried swapping the drives, the master is always PIO regardless. I've tried using ONE drive, if its set as master it comes up PIO. I've tried using a different cable, same result. Could it be 2 bad cables?

I tried reinstalling the chipset drivers, no change. Is there some way to "jar" the master DVD drive back to DMA mode? It is set in the device manager to DMA IF AVAILABLE but always comes up PIO.

Something changed when I swapped out the slave drive and I can't seem to get it to go back to both drives being DMA.

 

[Steve]

Are there firmware upgrades available for these drives?

 

[uzun]

I'm fairly certain it's not the drives at all. They both work in DMA mode if setup as the slave drive, and used to be in the system together and they worked fine.

Could I have damaged the controller on the MB at all in a way that prevents DMA from the master drive on the PATA chain? Is possible I have two bad cables, and its the cables fault for some reason. Does the cable often prevent DMA to one of the drives connected to it?

 

[AsianriceX]

From what I've read, sometimes when Windows detects a read issue with an optical drive, it'll drop it down from DMA to PIO to help with compatibility.

What I've done in the past was hit up the Device Manager and "Uninstall" the optical device so that Windows will be forced to redetect it upon reboot.

I'd give that a try.

 

[uzun]

A modified version of your suggestion basically worked, thank you! I uninstalled both optical drives but that didnt do it. I then uninstalled the drives and the primary ATA controller. Then rebooted. Then it came up PIO Mode only, but once I changed that back to DMA if Available and rebooted, they BOTH came back DMA Mode 2.

So basically uninstalling the optical drives in device manager, AND the Primary PATA controller in the device manager, did the trick. It took a few reboots and I had to change the setting in the PATA controller section to DMA IF AVAILABLE since it came back by default as PIO only, but once I did it detected DMA mode 2 for BOTH drives and all is well again.

Thanks so much for the help.