Why does burning a CD slow my system to a halt?

[Nkcowboy]

Hi,
I recently bought a new system with very nice specs (Athlon XP 3200, 1024 ram, 9800 pro video card) and it has a sony dru-10a burning included, which burns CDs at 24x. I had an older PC that burnt cds at 48x using only a little CPU %. My new system, however, seems to slow to a halt when burning, with the buffer going up and down more than I thought it should (I use the latest Nero). Is there something I should enable to fix this? I basically know that it should not tax the system at all. Even winamp starts to sound slow and funny. Any help will be great!
Thanks NK

UPDATE:
Hey,
I think the problem must be related to the DMA. I ran the NeroCheck tool (NeroInfo or something) and it found that the hard drive on the first IDE channel was using DMA, while the Sony DRu10A drive on the second channel was not.

I went into control panel-system-ide controller and tried to change the second IDE to use DMA. I only got the option "Enable DMA if Available", and it said it was currently using PIO. Doing this several times and restarting each time did nothing, as it kept using PIO (which is what anyway?) I can't see another way of making it use DMA. Any ideas?

Thanks,
NK

 

[Idz21]

I had a similiar problem when my system was overclocked, however new motherboard bios fixed the issue.

 

[johnjkr1]

Is DMA enabled? If not, enable it in device manager under the IDE controllers. Also, do you have the proper chipset drivers installed?

 

[JustAnAverageGuy]

PIO?

 

[Nkcowboy]

Hey,
I'll try the DMA thing. I assume all the proper drivers were installed, as I ordered the computer from a big company here in England (Mesh). I'll run a few tests and see if it works. thanks

NK

 

[SemperFi]

What IDE channel is your burner on. If it is on the same channel as the drive you are getting your files from could cause the problem.

 

[johnjkr1]

Also, don't assume drivers are installed properly, check. Also, make sure you have the latest version of your burning software installed.

 

[Nkcowboy]

Hey,
I think the problem must be related to the DMA. I ran the NeroCheck tool (NeroInfo or something) and it found that the hard drive on the first IDE channel was using DMA, while the Sony DRu10A drive on the second channel was not.

I went into control panel-system-ide controller and tried to change the second IDE to use DMA. I only got the option "Enable DMA if Available", and it said it was currently using PIO. Doing this several times and restarting each time did nothing, as it kept using PIO (which is what anyway?) I can't see another way of making it use DMA. Any ideas?

Thanks,
NK

 

[LTC8K6]

Delete the second controller and allow windows to redetect it. It has defaulted to PIO mode because it detected errors in DMA mode.

Not delete, but remove.

 

[Nkcowboy]

GREAT! Thanks, did the trick. Thanks again!
NK

 

[Calin]

PIO - programmed input-output. This has several levels, the best being PIO-4. However, the PIO mode of transfer between the CD-ROM and the rest of the computer uses the processor to move data. This is bad, as the processor is not very good at this.
The DMA (Direct Memory access) copies data "automagically" from the system memory to the CD-ROM (it uses a specialzed processor that is built FOR MEMORY TRANSFERS). This programmable input-output controller can to the copying better than any Pentium 4 processor.

Calin

EDIT: DMA is newer and better than PIO. Not all the CDROMs and CD-RWs in (about) year 2000 supported the DMA mode. All the current CD-* and DVD-* should.