How do i check if DMA is enabled

[ShinGouki]

I am using windows 2000 with service pack 4. I originally had a 24x Plextor CD burner that could happily burn 700mb in 3 and a half mins. It also let me carry on peacfully with whatever else i was doing at the time. Very minor cpu usage.

Since then ive had an MSI 42x and a LiteOn 48x both of which seemed to have serious issues. They both achieved no better than 6 min burns for a 700mb disc. I reinstalled Nero, clean OS reinstall. Even completly new hard disk and RAM. My system is an Athlon 2800XP, 1gb Twinmoss RAM, Shuttle SN45g.

Now i had this problem on my old Epox 8rda+, and hoped that when i got the Shuttle SN45g this problem would go away. Unforntunately exactly the same problem. So im wondering what the hell is wrong now. I just replaced my LiteOn with a BTC DVD burner.
Supports 4x DVD-R/RW and 4xDVD+R/RW. But now, not only does this take 35 mins to burn one dvd at 4x *should be about 15* but it also uses no less than 90% cpu usage and renders my machine completly unusable until i finish burning.

What the hell am i doing wrong. Someone please help, im sure there must be a simple solution to this as that kind of cpu usage seems insane to me.

Waits patiently for Reply

 

[PanzerIV]

Are you certain DMA is enabled? Doesn't sound like it.

 

[Nocturnal]

Make sure DMA is enabled for both IDE drives.

 

[ShinGouki]

Do i have to check that in teh Bios? and how can i check... will Sisoft tell me?

 

[ShinGouki]

*bump*

 

[MetroFly]

device manager -> ide/ATA/Atapi controllers

in the advance settings tab of whatever channel you're using

if its not in DMA mode, then you can change it there as well.

 

[Slammy1]

I'm going to show my ignorance, but how do you tell on an S-ATA channel? Is there a program?

 

[ShinGouki]

Thanks a lot ill give that a try , i checked it and it doesn't seem to have been enabled so hopefully it should fix all my problems.

 

[ShinGouki]

yup thats done it

Now i can happily burn DVD's without noticing a hit in performance in any other apps, and it will burn the whole DVD happily in around 13mins.

Thanks for your help guys.