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    Windows, DMA, and Centrino

    Discussion in 'Windows OS and Software' started by highlandsun, Feb 10, 2005.

  1. highlandsun

    highlandsun Notebook Evangelist

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    The Windows XP IDE driver will fallback to slower and slower transfer modes whenever it encounters timeouts talking to a device. These timeouts happen frequently when resuming from hibernation. There are registry hacks to get around this if you're using XP SP2, but I haven't installed that update, nor do I plan to.

    A better solution would be to use Intel's own IDE driver, which always uses the fastest DMA mode available. Their so-called Intel Application Accelerator is a free download, but the latest version doesn't support Mobile chipsets any more, and the previous version doesn't recognize the 82801DBM IDE controller in the Centrino chipset. Fortunately, there's a way to make it all work, and I've posted it on my web site:

    http://highlandsun.com/hyc/centrino/dma.html

    Even when the Windows driver is working properly, it falls back to PIO mode in lots of situations, including running in Safe mode. The Intel driver runs in the mode you specify, all the time. This makes things like booting to Safe mode to defrag your filesystems much much faster than before.


    old: Sony PCG-GR300P 1.13GHz PIII-M, 512MB
    new: Asus M6Ne 2.00GHz P-M, 2GB
     
    highlandsun, Feb 10, 2005
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