Do I have hard drive DMA?

I am unsure about whether or not DMA is working on my
Windows 98 system. I have a 7200RPM Maxtor drive
(Ultra ATA/133), running off of an Iwill KD266
motherboard with a 1.2G Athlon using ALi chip set
(only does ATA/100). ALi has an IDE Cache Utility
which shows the current mode, and it shows "PIO" for
my hard drive, CD-RW, and DVD-ROM. The settings pages
for these devices in the Device Manager no longer
offer a DMA check box. (The DMA boxes used to be
there, but I have not seen them in about a year. I do
not remember what I might have done to cause them to
disappear, but I suspect a motherboard change from a
motherboard using a different (VIA?) chip set.)

The implication would seem to be that I am running in
PIO mode. The ALi utility offers me a choice of "DMA"
for the CD and DVD drives, but it does not 'take'.
For the hard drive, the utility only offers "Auto" and
"PIO". It is set on "Auto". There is even an
(undocumented) "SetDMA.exe" utility from ALi which has
no apparent impact on the mode. (The display it
creates does not look right to me either.)

My BIOS does recognize all three of my IDE devices as
having DMA capability.

To further diagnose my situation, I have run HD Tach.
I get an average read burst rate around 22MB/sec
(surprisingly uniform across the whole disk) with CPU
utilization running in the 4-5% range. These are not
fantastic specs, but I am doubtful that they could be
achieved without DMA. OTOH, my burner has 32x
capability; and, when I burn CDs, I can never burn at
more than about 16x - even coming straight from the
hard drive with, say, an ISO image. It strikes me
that an otherwise unloaded 1.2G Athlon should be able
to keep up with the 32x burner. You can see that the
burner itself _can_ go much faster because it will do
so when its buffer is full. Ie., the limit is imposed
by the CPU's ability to keep the burner's buffer full.
(Copying directly from the DVD-ROM drive to the CD-RW
consistently fails altogether - lots of coasters.)

My experience in this area is very weak, so I am
hoping that someone more knowledgeable can interpret
my numbers and tell me if I am really running in PIO
mode all the time.

Assuming that I am running in DMA mode after all, why
I am getting contrary indications? I hope that this
is not my situation because then there is no hope for
getting full speed out of my CD burner.

Assuming that I am really just in PIO mode, is there
anything that can be done about it? I have done a lot
of searching at Google Groups; and, as far as I can
tell, there are plenty of others who have experienced
the disappearance of the DMA checkboxes in Device
Manager. Yet I have never found comprehensive advice
about how to correct the problem which would be
applicable in my situation. (I do recall a case in
which the 'victim', who had tried a number of things,
finally gave up and reinstalled Windows. I am very
loathe to do that as it would literally take many days
of extremely boring grunt work to reinstall and
configure all the stuff I run at one time or another.
Indeed, if I install a new OS, it will be XP. But
even then, I would still like to be able to dual boot
back to my old Windows 98 system.) I am currently
running the standard MicroSoft driver.

I am familiar with the following thread:


http://www.google.com/groups?hl=en&l...f5364c6&rnum=8

My Windows 98 was installed from scratch - no upgrade
from 95. To my knowledge, no non-MS drivers for IDE
controller or hard drives have ever been installed. I
have not seen "no DMA checkbox" under such
circumstances. (However, I cannot swear that
something else was not installed when I was using the
motherboard with the VIA chipset, as I did not
personally do the motherboard changes. (I could have,
but each involved warranty coverage from a local
shop.) I do have the appropriate two lines in my
MSHDC.INF file, though I am not even sure that those
entries even apply to ATA UDMA devices.

I don't see anything that looks relevant in my CMOS
BIOS setup. "PnP OS" is enabled.

Thanks in advance for any advice.

David V.


PS - One more symptom: Several months ago, I made the
mistake of trying to move my Windows 98 installation
from a 6G Fujitsu drive to a 40G Fujitsu drive.
Apparently Windows 98 cannot deal with a drive larger
than 32G. Oddly, Windows would run from the 40G drive
in Safe Mode; but, in regular mode, I got all sorts of
really bizarre symptoms - culminating in the
corruption of the 40G drive (and not just the
partition from which Windows was running). When I
tried the same move from the 6G drive to the Maxtor,
which is a 30G drive, all went immediately as I
expected. The fact that Windows behaved differently
with the 40G drive in Safe Mode (where I am sure that
it uses PIO) suggests that the difference when not in
Safe Mode may have been an attempt to use DMA. But
the DMA check boxes had already disappeared well
before this 'moving' experience.

In article , DJV1
@Austin.RR.com says...
I am unsure about whether or not DMA is working on my
Windows 98 system. I have a 7200RPM Maxtor drive
(Ultra ATA/133), running off of an Iwill KD266
motherboard with a 1.2G Athlon using ALi chip set
(only does ATA/100). ALi has an IDE Cache Utility
which shows the current mode, and it shows "PIO" for
my hard drive, CD-RW, and DVD-ROM. The settings pages
for these devices in the Device Manager no longer
offer a DMA check box. (The DMA boxes used to be
there, but I have not seen them in about a year. I do
not remember what I might have done to cause them to
disappear, but I suspect a motherboard change from a
motherboard using a different (VIA?) chip set.)
snip


Go to Control Panel, System, device manager. Select the HDD and select
properties. Make sure the Use DMA box is ticked.

--
________________________
Conor Turton

ICQ:31909763
________________________

"David Vanderschel" wrote in message
.. .
I am unsure about whether or not DMA is working on my
Windows 98 system. I have a 7200RPM Maxtor drive
(Ultra ATA/133), running off of an Iwill KD266
motherboard with a 1.2G Athlon using ALi chip set
(only does ATA/100). ALi has an IDE Cache Utility
which shows the current mode, and it shows "PIO" for
my hard drive, CD-RW, and DVD-ROM. The settings pages
for these devices in the Device Manager no longer
offer a DMA check box. (The DMA boxes used to be
there, but I have not seen them in about a year. I do
not remember what I might have done to cause them to
disappear, but I suspect a motherboard change from a
motherboard using a different (VIA?) chip set.)

Go he
http://www.iwill.net/supports/driver...&SID=33&MID=26
and download the latest motherboard drivers. Install them and you should be
ok.......

I am sorry, but the three responses which have been
posted so far are not helpful. I believe what I have
is a hard problem, and these responses seem to assume
that it is simple.

__________________________________________________ ____________________


"DS" wrote in message
. net...
Go he
http://www.iwill.net/supports/driver...&SID=33&MID=26
and download the latest motherboard drivers. Install them and you should be
ok.......

Been there; done that; no joy! Actually, there is an
even newer version (1.091) of the ALi drivers
available directly from ALi, but those don't help
either. Indeed, as far as I can tell there is no IDE
Bus Master or IDE device driver code in that ALi
package. (There is an IDE Cache Manager driver and
the associated utility is reporting that I am in PIO
mode. The main driver in that package is for the ALi
AGP interface.)

__________________________________________________ ____________________


"JAD" wrote in message
arthlink.net...
Also you realize that blank media is rated by speed. So if you bought disks
rated at 1x to 32x then you can burn at any speeds in between.
'Nero'(burnware) defaults to the fastest speed allowed by the media. That
32x wouldn't happen to be a BENQ drive? VERY particular about the media you
use.

My observations about CD burning speed had nothing to
do with whether or not attempts at burning were
successful. I am watching the continuously updated
speed reported by Easy CD Creator while the burning is
in progress. I even remarked that the burner itself
_does_ go faster than 16x when its buffer is full.
The problem is that the computer can only stoke the
buffer at about a 16x rate. (Note that burner
software does not automatically know the rated maximum
burning speed of the media. It will attempt to burn
at whatever speed you tell it to, whether that will
work properly or not. In most cases when burning too
fast, the burning software will still not know that it
is failing to write a good disk.)

(I did remark that I cannot copy a CD successfully
from my DVD-ROM drive direct to CD-R. That problem
may be more complicated, but I have experimented
enough to be confident that it is not media-related.)

and as for the DMA /IDE drivers make sure you have
the latest and greatest mainboard drivers.

As far as I can tell, my motherboard is designed to
work properly with the standard IDE drivers provided
by MicroSoft and which have not been updated by
MicroSoft.

__________________________________________________ ____________________


"Conor" wrote in message
t...
Go to Control Panel, System, device manager. Select the HDD and select
properties. Make sure the Use DMA box is ticked.

Conor, you quoted my first paragraph in which I wrote,
"The settings pages for these devices in the Device
Manager no longer offer a DMA check box."
THIS IS THE PROBLEM! Did you even read what you quoted?

__________________________________________________ ____________________


Personally, I think something is hosed up inside
Windows (eg., a wrong entry in registry or some other
configuration information); but I have no clue about
how to zero in on it so I can straighten it out. I
could really use some expert help here.

Could someone please comment on my HD Tach results?
Is it possible to get only 4% or 5% CPU utilization
without DMA? Should I hope for more that 22MB/sec
average read burst speed? This is one of the areas
where I am very unclear.

Regards,
David V.





"David Vanderschel" wrote in message
...
I am unsure about whether or not DMA is working on my
Windows 98 system. I have a 7200RPM Maxtor drive
(Ultra ATA/133), running off of an Iwill KD266
motherboard with a 1.2G Athlon using ALi chip set
(only does ATA/100). ALi has an IDE Cache Utility
which shows the current mode, and it shows "PIO" for
my hard drive, CD-RW, and DVD-ROM. The settings pages
for these devices in the Device Manager no longer
offer a DMA check box. (The DMA boxes used to be
there, but I have not seen them in about a year. I do
not remember what I might have done to cause them to
disappear, but I suspect a motherboard change from a
motherboard using a different (VIA?) chip set.)

The implication would seem to be that I am running in
PIO mode. The ALi utility offers me a choice of "DMA"
for the CD and DVD drives, but it does not 'take'.
For the hard drive, the utility only offers "Auto" and
"PIO". It is set on "Auto". There is even an
(undocumented) "SetDMA.exe" utility from ALi which has
no apparent impact on the mode. (The display it
creates does not look right to me either.)

My BIOS does recognize all three of my IDE devices as
having DMA capability.

To further diagnose my situation, I have run HD Tach.
I get an average read burst rate around 22MB/sec
(surprisingly uniform across the whole disk) with CPU
utilization running in the 4-5% range. These are not
fantastic specs, but I am doubtful that they could be
achieved without DMA. OTOH, my burner has 32x
capability; and, when I burn CDs, I can never burn at
more than about 16x - even coming straight from the
hard drive with, say, an ISO image. It strikes me
that an otherwise unloaded 1.2G Athlon should be able
to keep up with the 32x burner. You can see that the
burner itself _can_ go much faster because it will do
so when its buffer is full. Ie., the limit is imposed
by the CPU's ability to keep the burner's buffer full.
(Copying directly from the DVD-ROM drive to the CD-RW
consistently fails altogether - lots of coasters.)

My experience in this area is very weak, so I am
hoping that someone more knowledgeable can interpret
my numbers and tell me if I am really running in PIO
mode all the time.

Assuming that I am running in DMA mode after all, why
I am getting contrary indications? I hope that this
is not my situation because then there is no hope for
getting full speed out of my CD burner.

Assuming that I am really just in PIO mode, is there
anything that can be done about it? I have done a lot
of searching at Google Groups; and, as far as I can
tell, there are plenty of others who have experienced
the disappearance of the DMA checkboxes in Device
Manager. Yet I have never found comprehensive advice
about how to correct the problem which would be
applicable in my situation. (I do recall a case in
which the 'victim', who had tried a number of things,
finally gave up and reinstalled Windows. I am very
loathe to do that as it would literally take many days
of extremely boring grunt work to reinstall and
configure all the stuff I run at one time or another.
Indeed, if I install a new OS, it will be XP. But
even then, I would still like to be able to dual boot
back to my old Windows 98 system.) I am currently
running the standard MicroSoft driver.

I am familiar with the following thread:


http://www.google.com/groups?hl=en&l...fdf2f5364c6&rn
um=8

My Windows 98 was installed from scratch - no upgrade
from 95. To my knowledge, no non-MS drivers for IDE
controller or hard drives have ever been installed. I
have not seen "no DMA checkbox" under such
circumstances. (However, I cannot swear that
something else was not installed when I was using the
motherboard with the VIA chipset, as I did not
personally do the motherboard changes. (I could have,
but each involved warranty coverage from a local
shop.) I do have the appropriate two lines in my
MSHDC.INF file, though I am not even sure that those
entries even apply to ATA UDMA devices.

I don't see anything that looks relevant in my CMOS
BIOS setup. "PnP OS" is enabled.

Thanks in advance for any advice.

David V.


PS - One more symptom: Several months ago, I made the
mistake of trying to move my Windows 98 installation
from a 6G Fujitsu drive to a 40G Fujitsu drive.
Apparently Windows 98 cannot deal with a drive larger
than 32G. Oddly, Windows would run from the 40G drive
in Safe Mode; but, in regular mode, I got all sorts of
really bizarre symptoms - culminating in the
corruption of the 40G drive (and not just the
partition from which Windows was running). When I
tried the same move from the 6G drive to the Maxtor,
which is a 30G drive, all went immediately as I
expected. The fact that Windows behaved differently
with the 40G drive in Safe Mode (where I am sure that
it uses PIO) suggests that the difference when not in
Safe Mode may have been an attempt to use DMA. But
the DMA check boxes had already disappeared well
before this 'moving' experience.

Greetings...

Very interesting problem...

There are any number of utility programs that will report whether or not you are actually
using DMA. Sandra is one.. DMAtool is another...

In my experience, I would assume that it is a safe conclusion that you are NOT using DMA.
If windows isn't reporting it, and so long as there are no other errors in the system
property sheet. Such as missing PCI bridges and that sort of thing or other system
devices...

It sounds to me from what I can tell from your description, that you have APCI turned off
in BIOS. What you describe is exactly what would happen on my system if I turned it off.

DMA would not function, any utility I tried to use to force it on, it won't stick, and
terrible performance from optical drives, especially those on the same ide channel...

I'd check that first. If it's off, turn it on...
If it shows on, turn it off, (you really don't have anything to lose, then turn it back
on...
However, a warning - EVERYTIME I've tried this, I've always had to reformat and
reinstall the system afterwards. However, I have noticed that it usually works about as
well as a 2 X 4 across the head of a stubborn mule... Things start working again...
That's been my experience, Your milage may vary... I've used almost exclusively VIA
chipsets, I've never used ALI....

Besides, If things are as bad as you have described, you are looking at a complete
reinstall anyway..

To answer your other question about your drive speeds and CPU utilization, it's about what
you would expect. It's neither high or low and is no reliable indication of DMA activity.
The problems you are having with your optical drives is a better indicator that they are
not using DMA...

Check the BIOS settings to learn whether DMA is enabled or even available
on your PC.

--
http://www.standards.com/; Howard Kaikow's web site.
------------------------------------------------
"David Vanderschel" wrote in message
. ..
I am sorry, but the three responses which have been
posted so far are not helpful. I believe what I have
is a hard problem, and these responses seem to assume
that it is simple.

__________________________________________________ ____________________


"DS" wrote in message
. net...
Go he
http://www.iwill.net/supports/driver...&SID=33&MID=26
and download the latest motherboard drivers. Install them and you should
be
ok.......

Been there; done that; no joy! Actually, there is an
even newer version (1.091) of the ALi drivers
available directly from ALi, but those don't help
either. Indeed, as far as I can tell there is no IDE
Bus Master or IDE device driver code in that ALi
package. (There is an IDE Cache Manager driver and
the associated utility is reporting that I am in PIO
mode. The main driver in that package is for the ALi
AGP interface.)

__________________________________________________ ____________________


"JAD" wrote in message
arthlink.net...
Also you realize that blank media is rated by speed. So if you bought
disks
rated at 1x to 32x then you can burn at any speeds in between.
'Nero'(burnware) defaults to the fastest speed allowed by the media.
That
32x wouldn't happen to be a BENQ drive? VERY particular about the media
you
use.

My observations about CD burning speed had nothing to
do with whether or not attempts at burning were
successful. I am watching the continuously updated
speed reported by Easy CD Creator while the burning is
in progress. I even remarked that the burner itself
_does_ go faster than 16x when its buffer is full.
The problem is that the computer can only stoke the
buffer at about a 16x rate. (Note that burner
software does not automatically know the rated maximum
burning speed of the media. It will attempt to burn
at whatever speed you tell it to, whether that will
work properly or not. In most cases when burning too
fast, the burning software will still not know that it
is failing to write a good disk.)

(I did remark that I cannot copy a CD successfully
from my DVD-ROM drive direct to CD-R. That problem
may be more complicated, but I have experimented
enough to be confident that it is not media-related.)

and as for the DMA /IDE drivers make sure you have
the latest and greatest mainboard drivers.

As far as I can tell, my motherboard is designed to
work properly with the standard IDE drivers provided
by MicroSoft and which have not been updated by
MicroSoft.

__________________________________________________ ____________________


"Conor" wrote in message
t...
Go to Control Panel, System, device manager. Select the HDD and select
properties. Make sure the Use DMA box is ticked.

Conor, you quoted my first paragraph in which I wrote,
"The settings pages for these devices in the Device
Manager no longer offer a DMA check box."
THIS IS THE PROBLEM! Did you even read what you quoted?

__________________________________________________ ____________________


Personally, I think something is hosed up inside
Windows (eg., a wrong entry in registry or some other
configuration information); but I have no clue about
how to zero in on it so I can straighten it out. I
could really use some expert help here.

Could someone please comment on my HD Tach results?
Is it possible to get only 4% or 5% CPU utilization
without DMA? Should I hope for more that 22MB/sec
average read burst speed? This is one of the areas
where I am very unclear.

Regards,
David V.





"David Vanderschel" wrote in message
...
I am unsure about whether or not DMA is working on my
Windows 98 system. I have a 7200RPM Maxtor drive
(Ultra ATA/133), running off of an Iwill KD266
motherboard with a 1.2G Athlon using ALi chip set
(only does ATA/100). ALi has an IDE Cache Utility
which shows the current mode, and it shows "PIO" for
my hard drive, CD-RW, and DVD-ROM. The settings pages
for these devices in the Device Manager no longer
offer a DMA check box. (The DMA boxes used to be
there, but I have not seen them in about a year. I do
not remember what I might have done to cause them to
disappear, but I suspect a motherboard change from a
motherboard using a different (VIA?) chip set.)

The implication would seem to be that I am running in
PIO mode. The ALi utility offers me a choice of "DMA"
for the CD and DVD drives, but it does not 'take'.
For the hard drive, the utility only offers "Auto" and
"PIO". It is set on "Auto". There is even an
(undocumented) "SetDMA.exe" utility from ALi which has
no apparent impact on the mode. (The display it
creates does not look right to me either.)

My BIOS does recognize all three of my IDE devices as
having DMA capability.

To further diagnose my situation, I have run HD Tach.
I get an average read burst rate around 22MB/sec
(surprisingly uniform across the whole disk) with CPU
utilization running in the 4-5% range. These are not
fantastic specs, but I am doubtful that they could be
achieved without DMA. OTOH, my burner has 32x
capability; and, when I burn CDs, I can never burn at
more than about 16x - even coming straight from the
hard drive with, say, an ISO image. It strikes me
that an otherwise unloaded 1.2G Athlon should be able
to keep up with the 32x burner. You can see that the
burner itself _can_ go much faster because it will do
so when its buffer is full. Ie., the limit is imposed
by the CPU's ability to keep the burner's buffer full.
(Copying directly from the DVD-ROM drive to the CD-RW
consistently fails altogether - lots of coasters.)

My experience in this area is very weak, so I am
hoping that someone more knowledgeable can interpret
my numbers and tell me if I am really running in PIO
mode all the time.

Assuming that I am running in DMA mode after all, why
I am getting contrary indications? I hope that this
is not my situation because then there is no hope for
getting full speed out of my CD burner.

Assuming that I am really just in PIO mode, is there
anything that can be done about it? I have done a lot
of searching at Google Groups; and, as far as I can
tell, there are plenty of others who have experienced
the disappearance of the DMA checkboxes in Device
Manager. Yet I have never found comprehensive advice
about how to correct the problem which would be
applicable in my situation. (I do recall a case in
which the 'victim', who had tried a number of things,
finally gave up and reinstalled Windows. I am very
loathe to do that as it would literally take many days
of extremely boring grunt work to reinstall and
configure all the stuff I run at one time or another.
Indeed, if I install a new OS, it will be XP. But
even then, I would still like to be able to dual boot
back to my old Windows 98 system.) I am currently
running the standard MicroSoft driver.

I am familiar with the following thread:



http://www.google.com/groups?hl=en&l...de18fdf2f5364c
6&rn
um=8

My Windows 98 was installed from scratch - no upgrade
from 95. To my knowledge, no non-MS drivers for IDE
controller or hard drives have ever been installed. I
have not seen "no DMA checkbox" under such
circumstances. (However, I cannot swear that
something else was not installed when I was using the
motherboard with the VIA chipset, as I did not
personally do the motherboard changes. (I could have,
but each involved warranty coverage from a local
shop.) I do have the appropriate two lines in my
MSHDC.INF file, though I am not even sure that those
entries even apply to ATA UDMA devices.

I don't see anything that looks relevant in my CMOS
BIOS setup. "PnP OS" is enabled.

Thanks in advance for any advice.

David V.


PS - One more symptom: Several months ago, I made the
mistake of trying to move my Windows 98 installation
from a 6G Fujitsu drive to a 40G Fujitsu drive.
Apparently Windows 98 cannot deal with a drive larger
than 32G. Oddly, Windows would run from the 40G drive
in Safe Mode; but, in regular mode, I got all sorts of
really bizarre symptoms - culminating in the
corruption of the 40G drive (and not just the
partition from which Windows was running). When I
tried the same move from the 6G drive to the Maxtor,
which is a 30G drive, all went immediately as I
expected. The fact that Windows behaved differently
with the 40G drive in Safe Mode (where I am sure that
it uses PIO) suggests that the difference when not in
Safe Mode may have been an attempt to use DMA. But
the DMA check boxes had already disappeared well
before this 'moving' experience.

Ahhh! A response which contains hopeful elements.


"Adam Selene" wrote in message
. ..
Greetings...

Very interesting problem...

There are any number of utility programs that will
report whether or not you are actually using DMA.
Sandra is one..

Not the free version (as far as I can tell).

DMAtool is another...

I can't find this. Part of the problem is that there
are a lot of spurious occurrences of "DMAtool" on the
Web. Anything more specific?

In my experience, I would assume that it is a safe
conclusion that you are NOT using DMA.

My assumption also. (I just did not want to seem too
positive about it in case I was confused.)

If windows isn't reporting it, and so long as there
are no other errors in the system property sheet.
Such as missing PCI bridges and that sort of thing or
other system devices...

Everything looks OK there.

It sounds to me from what I can tell from your
description, that you have APCI turned off in BIOS.
What you describe is exactly what would happen on my
system if I turned it off.

DMA would not function, any utility I tried to use
to force it on, it won't stick, and terrible
performance from optical drives, especially those on
the same ide channel...

I'd check that first. If it's off, turn it on...
If it shows on, turn it off, (you really don't have
anything to lose, then turn it back on...

PROBLEM: My CMOS setup does not even mention ACPI. I
have searched the .PDF file of the manual for my
motherboard and the only mention of "ACPI" is a line
claiming that ACPI is supported. Indeed, this review
page also seems to indicate that clearly:

http://www.digit-life.com/articles/i...133/index.html

When I look about in the CMOS setup, what I find is
setup for "APM". Is there another word I should be
looking for in that context? Is there another context
besides "power management" in which I should be
looking for "ACPI"?

Could the comment by SoonDae on the following page
be relevant?:


http://support.iwill.net/cgi-bin/ebb...Page=&Session=


The previous motherboard on which I had this
installation of Windows 98 running had a VIA chipset
and its CMOS setup did have an explicit "Enable ACPI"
option. I cannot find anything like that in the
Award BIOS for the Iwill KD266.

However, a warning - EVERYTIME I've tried this, I've
always had to reformat and reinstall the system
afterwards. However, I have noticed that it usually
works about as well as a 2 X 4 across the head of a
stubborn mule... Things start working again...
That's been my experience, Your milage may vary...
I've used almost exclusively VIA chipsets, I've
never used ALI....

Besides, If things are as bad as you have described,
you are looking at a complete reinstall anyway..

I'd really like to find a way to keep this
installation going - with DMA.

To answer your other question about your drive
speeds and CPU utilization, it's about what you
would expect. It's neither high or low and is no
reliable indication of DMA activity.

I looked around enough to reach a similar conclusion -
a conclusion which was unfortuately not definitive.

The problems you are having with your optical drives
is a better indicator that they are not using DMA...

Indeed. That is why I mentioned them.


I there something on the Windows side regarding ACPI
which I could try to get it to do some reinstallation
or reconfiguration which might help?

Still hoping,
David V.

I do
not remember what I might have done to cause them to
disappear, but I suspect a motherboard change from a
motherboard using a different (VIA?) chip set.)


I missed this on the first read. If you did not get rid of the old Mainboard
drivers out of windows/system then you will have problems unless the Chips
are of the same brand(and even then) Boot to safe mode and rid yur self of
any duplicate drivers or ghost drivers of hardware no longer present.
Actually I would remove all the hardware from device manager(win9x) and
reboot


"David Vanderschel" wrote in message
. ..
I am sorry, but the three responses which have been
posted so far are not helpful. I believe what I have
is a hard problem, and these responses seem to assume
that it is simple.

__________________________________________________ ____________________


"DS" wrote in message
. net...
Go he
http://www.iwill.net/supports/driver...&SID=33&MID=26
and download the latest motherboard drivers. Install them and you should
be
ok.......

Been there; done that; no joy! Actually, there is an
even newer version (1.091) of the ALi drivers
available directly from ALi, but those don't help
either. Indeed, as far as I can tell there is no IDE
Bus Master or IDE device driver code in that ALi
package. (There is an IDE Cache Manager driver and
the associated utility is reporting that I am in PIO
mode. The main driver in that package is for the ALi
AGP interface.)

__________________________________________________ ____________________


"JAD" wrote in message
arthlink.net...
Also you realize that blank media is rated by speed. So if you bought
disks
rated at 1x to 32x then you can burn at any speeds in between.
'Nero'(burnware) defaults to the fastest speed allowed by the media.
That
32x wouldn't happen to be a BENQ drive? VERY particular about the media
you
use.

My observations about CD burning speed had nothing to
do with whether or not attempts at burning were
successful. I am watching the continuously updated
speed reported by Easy CD Creator while the burning is
in progress. I even remarked that the burner itself
_does_ go faster than 16x when its buffer is full.
The problem is that the computer can only stoke the
buffer at about a 16x rate. (Note that burner
software does not automatically know the rated maximum
burning speed of the media. It will attempt to burn
at whatever speed you tell it to, whether that will
work properly or not. In most cases when burning too
fast, the burning software will still not know that it
is failing to write a good disk.)

(I did remark that I cannot copy a CD successfully
from my DVD-ROM drive direct to CD-R. That problem
may be more complicated, but I have experimented
enough to be confident that it is not media-related.)

and as for the DMA /IDE drivers make sure you have
the latest and greatest mainboard drivers.

As far as I can tell, my motherboard is designed to
work properly with the standard IDE drivers provided
by MicroSoft and which have not been updated by
MicroSoft.

__________________________________________________ ____________________


"Conor" wrote in message
t...
Go to Control Panel, System, device manager. Select the HDD and select
properties. Make sure the Use DMA box is ticked.

Conor, you quoted my first paragraph in which I wrote,
"The settings pages for these devices in the Device
Manager no longer offer a DMA check box."
THIS IS THE PROBLEM! Did you even read what you quoted?

__________________________________________________ ____________________


Personally, I think something is hosed up inside
Windows (eg., a wrong entry in registry or some other
configuration information); but I have no clue about
how to zero in on it so I can straighten it out. I
could really use some expert help here.

Could someone please comment on my HD Tach results?
Is it possible to get only 4% or 5% CPU utilization
without DMA? Should I hope for more that 22MB/sec
average read burst speed? This is one of the areas
where I am very unclear.

Regards,
David V.





"David Vanderschel" wrote in message
...
I am unsure about whether or not DMA is working on my
Windows 98 system. I have a 7200RPM Maxtor drive
(Ultra ATA/133), running off of an Iwill KD266
motherboard with a 1.2G Athlon using ALi chip set
(only does ATA/100). ALi has an IDE Cache Utility
which shows the current mode, and it shows "PIO" for
my hard drive, CD-RW, and DVD-ROM. The settings pages
for these devices in the Device Manager no longer
offer a DMA check box. (The DMA boxes used to be
there, but I have not seen them in about a year. I do
not remember what I might have done to cause them to
disappear, but I suspect a motherboard change from a
motherboard using a different (VIA?) chip set.)

The implication would seem to be that I am running in
PIO mode. The ALi utility offers me a choice of "DMA"
for the CD and DVD drives, but it does not 'take'.
For the hard drive, the utility only offers "Auto" and
"PIO". It is set on "Auto". There is even an
(undocumented) "SetDMA.exe" utility from ALi which has
no apparent impact on the mode. (The display it
creates does not look right to me either.)

My BIOS does recognize all three of my IDE devices as
having DMA capability.

To further diagnose my situation, I have run HD Tach.
I get an average read burst rate around 22MB/sec
(surprisingly uniform across the whole disk) with CPU
utilization running in the 4-5% range. These are not
fantastic specs, but I am doubtful that they could be
achieved without DMA. OTOH, my burner has 32x
capability; and, when I burn CDs, I can never burn at
more than about 16x - even coming straight from the
hard drive with, say, an ISO image. It strikes me
that an otherwise unloaded 1.2G Athlon should be able
to keep up with the 32x burner. You can see that the
burner itself _can_ go much faster because it will do
so when its buffer is full. Ie., the limit is imposed
by the CPU's ability to keep the burner's buffer full.
(Copying directly from the DVD-ROM drive to the CD-RW
consistently fails altogether - lots of coasters.)

My experience in this area is very weak, so I am
hoping that someone more knowledgeable can interpret
my numbers and tell me if I am really running in PIO
mode all the time.

Assuming that I am running in DMA mode after all, why
I am getting contrary indications? I hope that this
is not my situation because then there is no hope for
getting full speed out of my CD burner.

Assuming that I am really just in PIO mode, is there
anything that can be done about it? I have done a lot
of searching at Google Groups; and, as far as I can
tell, there are plenty of others who have experienced
the disappearance of the DMA checkboxes in Device
Manager. Yet I have never found comprehensive advice
about how to correct the problem which would be
applicable in my situation. (I do recall a case in
which the 'victim', who had tried a number of things,
finally gave up and reinstalled Windows. I am very
loathe to do that as it would literally take many days
of extremely boring grunt work to reinstall and
configure all the stuff I run at one time or another.
Indeed, if I install a new OS, it will be XP. But
even then, I would still like to be able to dual boot
back to my old Windows 98 system.) I am currently
running the standard MicroSoft driver.

I am familiar with the following thread:



http://www.google.com/groups?hl=en&l...de18fdf2f5364c
6&rn
um=8

My Windows 98 was installed from scratch - no upgrade
from 95. To my knowledge, no non-MS drivers for IDE
controller or hard drives have ever been installed. I
have not seen "no DMA checkbox" under such
circumstances. (However, I cannot swear that
something else was not installed when I was using the
motherboard with the VIA chipset, as I did not
personally do the motherboard changes. (I could have,
but each involved warranty coverage from a local
shop.) I do have the appropriate two lines in my
MSHDC.INF file, though I am not even sure that those
entries even apply to ATA UDMA devices.

I don't see anything that looks relevant in my CMOS
BIOS setup. "PnP OS" is enabled.

Thanks in advance for any advice.

David V.


PS - One more symptom: Several months ago, I made the
mistake of trying to move my Windows 98 installation
from a 6G Fujitsu drive to a 40G Fujitsu drive.
Apparently Windows 98 cannot deal with a drive larger
than 32G. Oddly, Windows would run from the 40G drive
in Safe Mode; but, in regular mode, I got all sorts of
really bizarre symptoms - culminating in the
corruption of the 40G drive (and not just the
partition from which Windows was running). When I
tried the same move from the 6G drive to the Maxtor,
which is a 30G drive, all went immediately as I
expected. The fact that Windows behaved differently
with the 40G drive in Safe Mode (where I am sure that
it uses PIO) suggests that the difference when not in
Safe Mode may have been an attempt to use DMA. But
the DMA check boxes had already disappeared well
before this 'moving' experience.