[jg0484]

Hey guys,

A bit of a newbie here. My computer is about 18 months old and up till a few weeks ago played movies fine. But i noticed it suddenly got all choppy on me while trying one and hasn't stopped doing it since - no movies watched in ages! Even the menu don't play right, with around 3 fps. I haven't used any burnt stuff, it's all been bought dvds, if that helps at all. And i've tried changing all sorts of cpu memory processes that the compaq troubleshooter advised, with no changes (i have no idea what i did, couldn't undo it now...).

So i stumbled onto this site (already gave a thumbs up. please don't disappoint!)

Thanks

[philthomas]

It sounds like your DMA settings may have reverted to PIO Mode .... a common problem, if you are running XP.

Have a look here as to how to check and reset them :

http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/device...e/IDE-DMA.mspx

[jg0484]

Thanks for the advice. Unfortunately, it hasn't fixed the problem. The secondary IDE channel was set to PIO but i couldn't get it to toggle to DMA as the instructions direct. Still on PIO. Am i not doing something right?

[philthomas]

Go to Device Manager, right click the Secondary IDE Channel and uninstall it, then reboot XP.

XP will then automatically reinstall the IDE Controller and redetect & reinstall the drive(s).

Then check that it has reset the DMA mode.

[jg0484]

Alright! It worked only after both the secondary channels were reinstalled.

Thanks heaps for your help.

[philthomas]

Glad it worked out ok m8

It's a common problem with XP. If it keeps happening though, it could be a sign of a dying drive. XP tries to use DMA, but after successive read errors, (which in the case of DVDRs/CDs), could be badly burned/scratched disks, XP reverts to PIO Mode and stays there.
If the read errors are on the HDD or the DVDs/CDs are kown to be good, then it may be a hardware issue.