Enable DMA for CD Devices in Windows 2000

[mrhair]

Hello,
I'm wondering if there is any way to force DMA mode for my DVD and CDRW drives in Windows 2000. They do support DMA, as it works for both of the drives in Windows 98 and Millenium. In Windows 2000, I have DMA if Available selected, but both are in PIO mode. This sucks because DVD playback on 2000 will be choppy with PIO mode, while it is super smooth in Millenium when DMA is enabled. Any help would be appreciated, thanks.

 

[Enigma]

Win2k should use DMA if applicable. Make sure you have all devices set to use DMA and if Via chipset make sure DMA driver is installed and enabled.

 

[Cozmo85]

Go to device manager, go to properties for your hard disk controller, set it from PIO mode to DMA if applicable. Win2k does not enable DMA by default on cd drives.

 

[mrhair]

The easy, normal methods have been tried and tried a long damn time ago. This is why I said that the drives were in PIO mode. Even registry hacks don't seem to work, so if anyone has any clue how to enable DMA on drives that DO SUPPORT DMA, please give a hand. Thanks.

 

[mrhair]

One more thing, my chipset is a 440BX.

 

[Wolfcastle]

"The easy, normal methods have been tried and tried a long damn time ago."

Haha, I like the way that sentence goes. I know a lot of you with the simple answers are trying to help, but (in my case in particular) this problem basically comes down to whether VIA is going to do anything about it or not. Microsoft could try to do something, but it's primarily a VIA problem. And currently, they don't seem to give a damn because not enough people are affected by it.

If enough of us complains to them, and they feel they might lose a lot of business by not writing a new driver, we might actually see some results. In the meanwhile, where are those enterprising programmers who can code anything? I guess they've all moved onto web developing and left the driver coding alone.

I guess some Intel chips are affected by it, too, but by and large, I've seen this problem on VIA chipsets. Don't any of the companies like MS, Intel, or VIA realize that DMA is a big issue?

 

[Len]

I do beleive I've got this one figured out, but please correct me if I'm wrong. The first step is not really necessary, but it will help you see what I'm driving at:

1. In device manager select View Devices by connection

2. Traverse down to PCI bus and then the IDE controller under which you'll see the Primary and Secondary channels and subsequently your CD drive/s

3. Go into the properties of the particular channel/s to which your CD drive/s is/are connected and under the Advanced Settings select "DMA if available" for the Transfer Mode

I am not 100% that this will in fact enable DMA for you CD-ROM, but thinking this out logically it seems to make sense. I know this isn't exactly what you asked for since you wanted to know how to force the DMA mode, but this is as close as I got. Matter of fact that seems to be as close as you got. Now that I think of it, also seems I made a fool of myself writing a tutorial for something you already have done. Oh well... Hopefully someday someone will find it useful

Len

 

[FastEddie]

If you have one of the Plextor IDE burners, the drive ships with an extra jumper in the bag with the tray key, and the drive has two pins on the rear of the drive next to the digital audio connector. Try placing the jumper on the two pins, then reboot, and see if your bios now lists the drive as udma compliant. If the drive now posts as being a udma device, then you should be able to enable DMA for all the devices on the Secondary IDE Connector without any problems.