PIO vs. DMA

[Warhammer]

I had to reinstall Windows XP on my machine today, and the inevitable problems cropped up. The only one I haven't been able to fix though is that my D: drive now has problems when set to DMA. It will crash after 10 seconds of use. If I set it to PIO only, it runs fine.

Any ideas how I can get it back to DMA mode?

[ZXTT]

First, this kind of thing isn't an XP problem. It's either a driver of hardware problem.

You don't give much info about your system. I assume this drive worked in DMA mode before. If so, do the following:

If an Intel chipset system, do these:
1. Make sure you've installed the Intel Chipset Software.
2. Possilbly install the Intel Matrix Storage Technology software.

Those two can be found here (choose your chipset):
http://support.intel.com/support/chipsets/

3. If the drive is connected to a non-Intel controller on an Intel chipset system or if an AMD system, install the drivers for the controller hardware (from the system vendor or the hardware vendor).

4. If it's a CD/DVD driver, check for a firmware update.

Oh, and do make sure you install the drivers for the exact model of hardware the driver is connecting to. I wasted half a day trying to install the wrong set of files once.

[jeff061]

I had this problem with a Maxtor drive a long time ago. I had to make a change on the firmware using a dos ustility from Maxtor, it was set to a DMA mode that conflicted with Windows XP. Or something along those lines.

[Warhammer]

Yeah, actually, I blamed it on XP because the only thing that had changed was a fresh install of XP. However, I set the HD on PIO only, and them when I reset it to DMA it worked. I assume that an interrupt or something was in conflict.