XP setting HDD to PIO mode??

[daveqb]

i have been having a problem of sudden degrading in performance of my XP for weeks now , which the only solution i had was to format & start again.

Now i have found out that XP sets the Transfer mode of my UDMA 5 HDD to PIO in XP!!!

BIOS has it as UDMA 5 but XP wont,

is there any solution to this ??


PS
my HDD it listed on microsoft.com as a 'Designed for XP product"

 

[Dennis Travis]

I am not sure this is the same problem but in XP sometimes if the CDROM has problems at UDMA whatever it will automatically take it down to PIO. Only problem is it will not let you set it back to UDMA. I read on the Microsoft Knowledge Base in a case like that you actually delete that Controler and reinstall it. This worked for my CDROM problem but not sure if it will work with the HDD especially if the HDD is the Master boot device. Also was it that way just after the new install of XP? Have you tried setting it manually to UDMA?

 

[HendrixFan]

What motherboard do you have? You may need to install the newest drivers (if its VIA, the newest 4in1 drivers). I know in Win2K some of my devices are set to PIO even though BIOS sees them as UDMA.

Go into control panel>system>device manager>IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers, and there on Primary IDE channel and Secondary IDE channel under properties>advanced settings you can enable DMA.

 

[Bozo Galora]

ditto to travis..................6 CRC errors in XP and youre back to PIO

 

[daveqb]

thanx for all the responses guys, keep em coming.

firstly, yes Dennis, i think its the same issue & me either, i am not sure about the unistalling of the IDE controller being its my boot up.i have it set for Use DMA if available , but its set to PIO mode just below that with no way of changing it.

Got the latest 4 in 1 drivers ( a bit obsessive compulsive about latest drivers)

whats 6 CRC errors??

ok between posting the first message , just after i found out what my problem was i got the brain wave to set my HDD to secondary thru jumpers & in BIOS.
Have just now booted up & it said its found a new device (duh!)
checked Device manager & its in UDMA mode 5
YAY!
but in secondary device,
so wanna try to change it back & reboot & we could be all ok,
be a pain to have to do this every few days though

 

[ScrapSilicon]

<< thanx for all the responses guys, keep em coming.

firstly, yes Dennis, i think its the same issue & me either, i am not sure about the unistalling of the IDE controller being its my boot up.i have it set for Use DMA if available , but its set to PIO mode just below that with no way of changing it.

Got the latest 4 in 1 drivers ( a bit obsessive compulsive about latest drivers)

whats 6 CRC errors??

ok between posting the first message , just after i found out what my problem was i got the brain wave to set my HDD to secondary thru jumpers & in BIOS.
Have just now booted up & it said its found a new device (duh!)
checked Device manager & its in UDMA mode 5
YAY!
but in secondary device,
so wanna try to change it back & reboot & we could be all ok,
be a pain to have to do this every few days though >>

basically you just did the delete controller operation mentioned by moving your HDD to a different IDE...so move it back to Primary..I have not had to delete the Primary but the Secondary seems to have been an every other day operation for about two weeks ..seems to have stabilized(i.e. I've stopped experimenting with different settings...lol)...gotta love the XP quirk on this

 

[daveqb]

well i put it back to master primary & it booted up with it in PIO mode DOH!

so i have had to put it back to Primary Slave

working at ata100 now, so i have made a restore point here hoping that if it decides to kick it over to PIO mode that i can restore it back to this setting , UDMA mode 5

if not maybe loading another device to IDE0 Master & then rebooting with me HDD back on that channel

man this sux !!!!

 

[daveqb]

Well the update is ........

i got a new HDD this time 7,200 RPM.

installed WinXP & WOW!!! isnt it fast!!

boots up from turn on to desktop in 35 seconds.

sound plays heaps better now, with only degrading when something major is happening.

but now...........

i noticed that the IDE Primary Controller setting for device 0 is at "Ultra DMA mode"

not "Ultra DMA Mode 5"
like it was before only a few hours ago

everythign is still running great, but i am concerned by tmw it will be back to PIO mode

is it down stepping it ?

& if so what could this be >??

proven not the HDD

maybe the IDE Controler on the MoBo ??

i have one partition in Fat32, its on the my original HDD & i have accessed since installing this new HDD

could that be it ?? the transfering of data from Fat32 to NTFS creating CRC errors ????


anyone please.........

*A cry in pain*


PS it eneded up at PIO mode in the slave position
could always muck around with that ,but obviously theres an underlying problem here

 

[Bozo Galora]

you probably screwed the 4 in1 install (IDE/Busmaster agp-cpu, pci-cpu pci-isa system devices)

why didn't you delete the controller like travis said???
(one of my pet peeves on forums, is people who come begging for help, then ignore what is said and go
muddling on about things their own way)

anyway, to quote (from another forum)......................

You may already know about this, but it's new to me and I haven't found much on it by way of web searching so I thought I would pass it along.

Recently I began to notice my Athlon XP 1800+ computer with 512 MB DDR SDRAM on an MSI KT266 board slowing down a bit. Boot times took longer; load times extended. It was sort of gradual, so I didn't notice it all at once. One day I'm sitting here waiting for my computer to boot thinking, "This is slower than my old 95 boot!" My hard drive performance had really slowed down across the board.

When I set XP up, I made sure to go in and change the default PIO modes on my IDE channels to 'Use DMA if available.' After that, I had confirmed that the modes on my devices had switched to various DMa modes. So I didn't figure that's where the problem was with this slowly corroding hard drive performance. After all, I had changed the settings properly and not made any adjustments to them, so how could my problem lie there?

Then I looked in Device Manager. IDE 0 was set to 'Use DMA if available', but the setting being used was *not* the DMA mode it had been set to previously, but, inexplicably, PIO! What's worse, there was no option to change it back to DMA. It was 'stuck'.

The problem turns out to be an automatic 'feature' of Windows XP, as explained on this MS Windows Platform Development Web Site:

For repeated DMA errors.

Windows XP will turn off DMA mode for a device after encountering certain errors during data transfer operations. If more that six DMA transfer timeouts occur, Windows will turn off DMA and use only PIO mode on that device.

In this case, the user cannot turn on DMA for this device. The only option for the user who wants to enable DMA mode is to uninstall and reinstall the device.

Windows XP downgrades the Ultra DMA transfer mode after receiving more than six CRC errors. Whenever possible, the operating system will step down one UDMA mode at a time (from UDMA mode 4 to UDMA mode 3, and so on).

So I uninstalled the Primary IDE channel and rebooted. Windows XP reinstalled the IDE drivers and redetected the hard drive. Reboot one more time with 'Use DMA if Available' and Voila!! Hard drive access was once again up-to-snuff, using the correct DMA mode.

I'm not entirely sure what errors I have had that qualified, but as an overclocker and gamer I have had driver issues, crashes relating to overclocking, and other occasional conflicts generated by my curiosity with trying all sorts of odds-and-ends. And to think, Windows XP was looking out for me the whole time by downgrading my data transfer modes!! I feel more protected by MS all the time; protected from good performance anyway.

===============================

you also might wanna search the registry for "bad" and delete anything related to IDE

 

[TheCollective]

http://www.dansdata.com/rcables.htm

You might wanna check this out because if your IDE cables are longer than 18 inches you may be running into signal issues. Just a thought.

 

[daveqb]

I have uninstalled the IDE controller but to no avail


even if that worked, if its doing this after a day or two then i am thinking there is an underlying reason for it that would be best to fix.

& the dropping of HDD's down to PIO mode is a known issue with MS but a ment one though.

i just wish the OS was written so it would tell the user what is happening, maybe even y it is happening, if thats not too much to ask.


Collective, yes tonight at work i was thinking & ruling things out & i find it cant be the MobO as i had a 4.3 gig on there for over a week running XP without any issue.

But did recall that around the time i decided to install XP on my main 40 gig, i played around with the HDD's & also put on a new IDE cable, its yellowish in colour, but brand new

maybe thats it
bout to try that now, but wont know straight away as i need re install again to see if it drops from UDMA mode 5

 

[Bozo Galora]

your wishes have come true.
XP gives very extensive analysis of system problems.
XP has an event log service, which when enabled, can the be viewed in event viewer

 

[Bozo Galora]

and XP comes with an INTERNAL "4 in 1" appprox vers 4.26 (there is no "vers" with setup VIA)
if you attempt 4.38 install you will mess things up again
XP does not easily give up its drivers

 

[daveqb]

ok in event viewer i am noticing that there a number of times i have had a run of 6 errors, for ATAPI

obviously whats causing Windows to degrade the transfer speed.

they are either "The driver detected a controller error on \Device\Ide\IdePort0."

or

"The device, \Device\Ide\IdePort0, did not respond within the timeout period."


now the question remains, what is the cause of this ???


i am beginning to think maybe the IDE cable.

i did install a new one bout the time i installed XP onto my 40 gig.
its a new cable, but its yellowish & its a little longer then my other grey cables (52 cm's)

i put one in thats 46cm's

maybe this will do the trick, dont have cables of the recommended 48 cm's

!?!?!

 

[Bozo Galora]

its not the cable

 

[nightowl]

I had the same problem with an Abit KT7 motherboard that uses the 686a southbridge. I am almost certain that the problem exists with VIA and not Microsoft. I say this because, I tried Win98, 2000, and XP and my Primary Master would always revert to using PIO mode after transfering data on the drive. It would start off in the highest UDMA mode available but eventually drop down to PIO mode. The drive would work fine on Primary Slave like you mentioned daveqb. The only thing I have found to "fix" the problem is installing VIA's special IDE drivers. These drivers are not part of the 4-in-1 drivers as they are meant to take care of problems like this.

 

[daveqb]

ok i found those Miniport drivers & am downloading them now. (if this works i'll kiss ya!!)

why wouldnt they includes these with their 4 in 1 pack ??
strange to me

i have the 686b southbridge.
if this works then theres no improvement in the 686b over the 686a in this category huh ?


ummm a note: putting the HDD to slave was only a temp solution, it is now on PIO (took about 3-4 hours to downsize to that)

the new HDD is on master & so far is only down to UDMA Mode

i assume thats UDMA Mode 0 when it says nothing after mode.




fingers crossed



Go! VIA

 

[daveqb]

a note i ment to make was that i was runing XP first on a small 4.3 gig HDD fujitsu also, just like my big 40 gig.

it ran error free for over a week , never slowed.

the only reason it is not on that now is i decided to stick with XP & installed (after a format) on my 40 gig

that HDD is now in my Mum's puter running with XP & the SiS 735 chipset.

no errors so far & its been i think 3-4 days




also a mate is running XP on the exact same MoBo as me (we bought em together) & no errors

admittedly he doesnt have a HDD bigger then 12 gigs

could the size be apart of this??

 

[ScrapSilicon]

Gigabyte GA-7ZX-H
does this need a BIOS update for Athlon XPs or no? second what processor is your mate running? next you are partitioned as FAT32.. correct with a 40GB harddrive(MS recommends NTFS on WinXP)? Finally can this

<< "The device, \Device\Ide\IdePort0, did not respond within the timeout period." >>

be lengthened?

<< now the question remains, what is the cause of this ???
>>

excellent question..very weird

 

[yellowperil]

Very strange, I had the same problem happen to me for the first time this morning. I noticed my computer was taking longer than usual to boot. When I tried to burn some CDs the buffer hovered around 1%. I checked my IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers and sure enough my HDD was set to PIO. I really can't figure out how it happened. I did manage to recover the normal setting (UDMA 5) by using System Restore, to last Friday's save.

 

[daveqb]

i just read back one of my posts & i think i made it sound like my 40 gig was runnnig error free on another system. what i meant was the 4.3 gig that was running error free on my system is still runnig error free on Duron 1 gig , SiS 735 chipset system (w/XP) And that the 40 gig has never ran error free with XP.....yet

just wanted to clear that up

I am a bit obsessvie compulsive when it comes to updates & latest drivers.
needless to say i have the latest BIOS update, the F3. there is an F4 beta BIOS on the gigsbyte website for my board but it doesnt flash with that in the Gigabyte Live!BIOS utility so dont want to mess around and manually install a BETA BIOS.
its been Beta for sometime now.

F3 detects up to 1900+ i believe anyway.

my mate has the same chip as i had as we bought em together, a Athlon T-bird 1.2
i have only ran XP with my XP chip (thought it would make the most of my chip so installed them together)
& XP does shows it potential for the first day or two, but then degrades.

ok file systems (dont think its this)

the first install i had the 40 as 6 (boot) as fat32 and 34 gig fat32

then installed again and formatted the boot partition as NTSF
no difference in regards to CRC errors.

then this new HDD (Maxtor 7,200 ATA13)
i partitioned (boot) 6 gig NTSF & 33 gig ( a little smaller HDD) as NTSF

stil no difference with this CRC error problems.

lengthen the timeout period??
sounds good, but i havent a clue on the how's there.


Yellowperil, i was thinking bout using recovery points to find what the problem was with this (first thought it was an app i installed)
but didnt think it would work with resetting the transfer rate.

so it does hey ???

great might try that, but what a pain, i hope to find a simpler solution then recovering every few hours.

does it 'unistall' apps u have installed since the recovery point ??

what system did this happen on yellwoperil??
if your Duron (w/ KT133) then this IDE miniport driver might be what u need too. this was pointed out by Nightowl (much appreciate it nightowl)

it doesnt install by default in the 4 in 1 set.

u can download it from via.com

i havent tried it yet, hoping its the problem, going to go home soon & install clean & install this driver too & see how we go


if it happened on your Athlon (W/SiS 735) then ................ F&*& ME!!!

i am out of ideas if that is the case.
maybe a one of it ifs your SiS 735 system

 

[yellowperil]

This happened on my Athlon (K7S5A) system. The restore took off a couple programs I installed over the weekend which was slightly inconvenient, but the ATA problem hasn't re-occurred. Two things that happened just before the problem was the daylight savings time change, and a critical update that XP downloaded. Also I ran my computer longer than usual this weekend (about 25 hours, off and on, of video encoding). I think it's unlikely that the first two caused the problem though. I'll just have to wait and see if it happens again.