Windows Vista DMA mode

I recently bought a new DVD burner to replace my old Sony one that died - I installed it in my laptop yesterday. The old drive was not functioning for a few days.

It's an NEC AD-5540A for reference. And I'm using Windows Vista.

Unfortunately I can do nothing with the drive because it is stuck in PIO mode and cannot be changed to DMA mode. I've already uninstalled the drive, the IDE controller in a number of combinations, nothing changes. Not even in the BIOS can I change it. Does anyone have any idea why I cannot change it to DMA?

I've read a number of Microsoft articles on why Windows changes the mode to PIO but unfortunately there are no fixes for Vista.

Thanks for any help.

 

Have you tried changing the new DVD burner to the master or is already it set as the master?

It's worth a shot anyways, let me know if that works.

Try this link too

http://tipvista.com/2006/07/how-to-fix-cd-dvd-drive-stuck-in-pio-mode/

 

I've already done the second link, but I'll try the master/slave. I'm not sure which it is set to.

Thanks for the reply.

 

No problem, hope it works, if not let me know.

Are there any Errors for the drive in the Event Log?
Do you have the latest firmware? It's possible the drive has automatically been reverted as a slave if it won't change to Master. If thats the case you may just need to get the same exact drive you had to begin wth. It's also possible that your previous DVD drive could have shorted out a transistor on the motherboard locking the drive in PIO.

 

Vista DRM sucks. I won't be upgrading anytime soon though I have a copy. I don't see what it offers me other than Aero which I could care less about. Paying for the privilege of a less competent machine seems odd. Did the old drive work?

 

Hey Chaz, I looked around and found this solution from Computing.net:

Be sure to search from the top of the registry tree when deleting instances of the checksums. Also there are some suggestions to make sure the drive cable is physically secured and connected, as well as the jumper position for the IDE channel is on cable select.

 

I'm not answering the question here, but could someone explain to me what PIO and DMA modes are?

 

One's slow, the other fast

Ok ok here's Wiki's take on PIO and DMA.

 

actually, i do not think that vista is, in this situation, the culprit. it has a lot to do with (1) chipset driver and (2) the ability of the hardware (be it drive or controller) to support dma or pio mode.

up until now, under xp or previous windows version, i was let (& still) to believe that these so called tweaks (changing dma setting and registry changes) would make a difference in the performance of hard/optical drive. I am not sure now that these tweak/modification have much an impact in system performance as it claimed to do.

vista, with my up.until.now experiences/play around with, is much cleaner and efficient than xp in the aspect of being able to p.u. in details what performance ability the hardware can offer - namely can it be run under DMA5, DMA6, DMA2 or PIO ? These r being written into the hardware microcode; by forcing it to run under any other mode (via software) would not make it run any better, only to satisfy users in a sense that "hey, i have it run the way it is being suggested to" (imho)

updating the chipset driver if it is not already being done from manufacturers inside vista database is the only way to secure that hardware runs the way it is being marketed/sold.

in my case via k8t800 had just released the driver that clearly stated my 1st controller is running at DMA5, the 2nd at DMA2 - prior to this, all i saw was DMA when applicable and DMA mode (general statement)

trying the tweak as mentioned in the above post to try to force the sucker to run DMA6 was being totally ignored (even now under XP with this latest chipset driver)

cheers ...

 

Chaz, try qhn's suggestion and update to intel's latest chipset drivers...

 

Basically, PIO mode means the CPU directly handles all data transfers. If you need to read data from the drive, the CPU goes out, requests a few bytes, waits for it to be returned (which takes ages), then the CPU passes it on to wherever it's needed. Then it goes back and reads a few more bytes.

DMA (Direct Memory Access) means the CPU simply gives the hardware a memory address to start writing to. Then it churns out data there without involving the CPU at all, until it's finished.

Insane speedup, and reduces CPU utilization from ~100% to practically nothing.

The hardware can certainly do it. Missing drivers does make Vista the culprit. Drivers are available for XP. If they aren't available for Vista, Vista has a problem.

DMA vs PIO is not a "tweak": It's a really basic hardware mode, and it makes a *huge* difference. Both in CPU utilization and in throughput on the hardware in question. Can easily see a 20x improvement in performance from making it run DMA mode.

And every piece of hardware written in at least the last 15 years supports DMA.

 

Not that I can see.

Nope, it was non-functional. It would not even read a CD. Windows recognized it but that's about it.

Thanks for the guide Gator. There were no instances of either of these under that directory:
MasterIdDataChecksum
SlaveIdDataChecksum

I did the second part instead, I'll be rebooting shortly and will edit this post to let you know how it goes.

Thanks for the info; I'll be hunting for an updated i915PM chipset driver if the other stuff I try doesn't work.

Thanks to everyone for all their replies, they are very much appreciated.

EDIT: Well I tried the registry hack and it didn't change anything. I'll be looking for updated chipset drivers.