In article MnZRc.12078$Yf6.3270@lakeread03, "Ohaya"
wrote:

Hi,

I was trying to get my daughter's PC ready for her going back to college,
and ran across a strange problem. I was able to get around it, but am still
puzzled by it, so I thought someone here might have some idea of what was
going on.

The PC had:

MB: Asus A7V8X-X
CPU: Duron 850
RAM: 1x512MB PC2700
HD: 1x60GB (don't remember brand)
DVD: generic 10X
CD/RW: TDK 32X (I think)
OS: Windows XP Home SP1

Originally, we had the HD on primary master, the DVD on secondary master and
CD/RW on secondary slave, and I think it was working. A couple of months
ago, before summer, she was not able to burn CDs. A couple of weeks ago, my
son replaced the TDK CD/RW with his Plexwriter 40X, but he didn't do any
testing, and this is what I "inherited".

IDE drivers were the generic MS/Via drivers that install with Windows XP
Home.

When I first started looking at it, she could burn CDs, but got high CPU
usage and you could see the buffer during the burn going really low.

I first checked DMA, and the CDRW was showing "PIO" even though "DMA if
possible" was selected. So I tried the 'set to PIO, then set to DMA' trick,
and it kept saying PIO. After doing some searching, I found a post saying
to set it to "DMA if possible", then delete the IDE in Device Manager, and
reboot. I did that, and sure enough, after the reboot, it showed "UDMA 2".

But the problem was that I couldn't burn at all using Nero. It kept giving
me a "device fault" error. Tried switching IDE cables, and switching
position of the DVD and IDE on the IDE cable (both drives had cable select),
to no avail.

Just by accident, I was testing with just the CD/RW on the IDE cable, and to
my surprise, it was working!!

I put the DVD back on the IDE cable (as slave), and after reboot, Device
manager showed the CD/RW as "PIO" again.

Mind you, both the DVD and CD/RW were listed as "UDMA2" by the BIOS display
through all of this.

Anyway, by this time, it was about 04:00, and I just happened to have a Siig
Ultra ATA 100 PCI card extra. I put the CD/RW as secondary master, and the
DVD on one of the ports on the Siig card.

When I rebooted, everything was working perfectly. DVD playing was fine,
and I could burn CDs with low CPU usage.

My conclusion is that somehow, the DVD and the CD/RW were interfering with
each other when they were on the same IDE channel. But, I know that the
CD/RW was good, because it was working in my son's machine before he moved
it over.

I guess I'm happy that it's working now, but I'm still puzzled by why I
couldn't get both the DVD and CD/RW to UDMA2 when on the same IDE...

I suppose the one possibility that I didn't test was using a different DVD
drive, since I don't have a spare.

Jim

Were you, by chance, using a 40 wire cable with the two devices in
cable select mode ? I thought the 80 wire cable was part of a cable
select solution. Maybe if you try master on one and slave jumpering
on the other, they will be happy together. Or, find an 80 wire
cable (with 40 pin connectors) and use that.

Just a guess,
Paul