Fantom

Hi Guys. Hope you can help me. I have an LG DVD writer and I seem to have lost DMA on it. I've been able to burn dvds in 8-10 minutes all previous times but last week when I opened Nero it came up with a DMA manager and told me that DMA was not enabled on my DVD drive but was on my CD-R drive. So I ticked the little box and its says I need to restart machine, so i did that and when I opened Nero again it came up with the same message. Tried again, same thing happened. So i ignored it and went on to burn a dvd anyway, and it took 45 minutes! All the dvds I burn now take this long. So how do I get Direct Memory Access back on my dvd drive???

Thanks for any help
Steve

GazTheHat

Google is your friend

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/258757

Fantom

Unfortunately it didn't work. I found out exactly what I need to do. Apparently after 6 unsuccessful attempts to use DMA windows changes the mode to PIO mode. However, you can fix this by uninstalling the drive and restarting the machine. When it finds the new hardware it will reinstall it and I can have DMA again. However, on my computer, it reinstalls the drive automatically and still does not give me the option to use DMA.
So what can i try now? How can I uninstall the drive properly so that it can't reinstall it automatically without promting me for the cd software and drivers etc????
Why does everything f*ck up for no reason? Why is Bill gates so loaded when things like this happen?
Please help if you can

Thanks
Steve

D16GER

Hi Steve,
EDIT - look at my post count <<<<

You need to enable it via the controller mate. To do this....

1 - Right click on 'My Computer'
2 - Select 'Hardware' tab
3 - Press 'Device Manager' button
4 - Press the '+' beside IDE ATA/Atapi Controllers

Now you need to know what channel the drive is on. If it is plugged into the secondary socket on the motherboard, then it is Secondary channel, and vice versa.

5 - Double click on the correct Channel
6 - Select 'Advanced Settings' tab
7 - Change drop down to 'Use DMA if available'

Save your changes. Hopefully after a restart you should be good to go. You can always go back in to see if it's enabled or not.

Fantom

d16ger thats exactly what I have done. It's set to "use dma if available" but underneath it says what it is actualy using and it says "pio mode". I can't change it

lightning101

Have you tried changing it in the bios ?

Fantom

Nope, where abouts do I go?

lightning101

Every bios is different but you are looking for the list of IDE devices with editable setting at the right hand column, they will read AUTO, PIO, UDMA and are normally changed using the PG UP/DN keys or the + button

D16GER

Not too sure you can change DMA in the bios, or at least I don't remember seeing it (and I am in there tinkering A LOT) Guess that would depend on the motherboard.

You could press either Del or F2 during boot (black screen at start) and see if there's an option in there, although I doubt it.

What sort of cable are you using? It is possible the cable is done in and needs replaced.

Also, I just did some snooping around in Google and apparently someone with a similar issue solved it by updating the bios.

jaytc2003

iTrader: (1)

If it is on the same channel(cable) as the cd drive then disconnect the cd drive, uninstall the dvd burner, reboot and see if it selects dma then.

Fantom

jaytc2003, tried that just now. Same thing, it reinstalls the drive without asking for any software etc and magically its back to PIO mode.
Surely there must be a way of making the computer forget it ever hda a dvd drive???
Please help guys I can't wait 40 mins to write a dvd every time

D16GER

Try this bud....

Windows Codename Longhorn: Force DMA-mode even after transfer errors and close bottlenecks

And even more to try....

DMA reverts to PIO

Hanslow

I've just had this on mine. I got round it by following some instructions which said to uninstall the IDE channel under IDE controllers in device manager that the drive is on. Then reboot and it should automatically reinstall the IDE controller/channel and revert to DMA mode again for the drive.

Yamarashi

As Hanslow said above ... that above will sort it! be aware though after 6 (or so) more CRC errors it will slow down again and you will have to uninstal the IDE channel again and reboot each time it slows down. I think there is a hotfix on the Mr microsofts website that supposedly stops this happening on various operating systems.

Fantom

Thanks guys I will try this tonight.

Steve