Strange cd-rom problem, someone please help...

[fitzhue]

Whenever i try and install some from my cd-rom, it will always freeze, and sometimes completely shutdown the system. Somehow i was able to install windows me but office 2000, quake 3, anything with big installs won't work. Someone please help. System specs are epox 8kta2, tbird 700, acer 650p 50x cd-rom, windows ME

 

[Vinny N]

That's weird. Are the VIA 4 in 1 drivers installed correctly, do you have any conflicts/errors in the device manager with your IDE controllers. Have you tried disabling/enabling DMA or sync data transfer for the cd-rom drive? No drives are in compatibility mode under the performance tab of system properties right?

 

[fitzhue]

Thanks for your reply Vinny_N, it turns out it was because dma was enabled on my cd-rom, with it disabled it works just fine now, thanks

 

[jugornot]

Actually the dma prolly should be turned on. I have had this problem before in win98. Somehow when I was adding a new drive (toshiba 10x dvd) dma was enabled. Later when I started switching some drives around the dma was disabled. I could tell by jerkiness when watching a dvd. Try as I might I could not re-enable the dma without crashes. I beleive I ended up removing the controllers and removing everything that concerned ide dma in the registery (very scary) then I rebooted and enabled dma on everything and now its fine. Somehow windows can become confused about dma and can stay confused without drastic measures.

 

[Vinny N]

Don't know about that jugornot...an old hard drives or ide controller in a system will freak out and mess up your data if DMA is on. There are also new burners and cd-rom drives that go crazy with DMA on, most of them seem to be Acer branded. So DMA isn't neccessarily "supposed" to be on.

 

[jugornot]

On "most" modern hardware it should. The only reason to disable dma is if it causes problems. When dma is disabled the drive attached becomes a cpu hog and slows down the entire system when being accessed. This is why dma should be enabled. If acers have a prob with dma being enabled I would suggest replacing the drive with one that goes not. HTH By the way on the cdspeed page the acer tests fairly well. You would not get good results if dma is not enabled. Perhaps my other post is describing the situation happening. And if you back up the registry the edits are not scary and in 98 you can restore to the old one. In me use the goback feature. The caution was intended for less experienced users who might blame me if they muck up their registry. It saved me a format and reload.