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CD DVD Drive Runs Too Slow

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4 replies

by cyberbiker

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I experienced a problem on a Windows XP SP2 computer for which I could not find solutions or similar experiences on message boards at HP Support, Microsoft or Tech Republic so I am posting the problem and solution here, in case others experience it.

PROBLEM
My CD/DVD drive began running slow. In a 30 second increment it would only cover 20-23 seconds of a DVD movie. The drive was only 14 months old and I had not spilled anything on it.

SOLUTION
Go to the Control Panel>System>Device Manager>IDE ATA/ATAPI drives. Right click on the Secondary and Primary IDE Channels in sequence and uninstall each. Then reboot. The drives will be reinstalled during hte reboot process and will indicate it needs to be restarted again for the reinstallation to take effect. That should solve the problem.

4 replies

by neal_work

I have had this problem several times before, usually with Hard drives rather than CD/DVD drives (but still IDE)
It is to do with error checking. When xp experiences more than 6 errors on reading a disk, it decides it is faulty, and sets the Transfer Mode to PIO, which is VERY slow, and uses vast amounts for CPU time. This can easily happen if you insert a scratched disk, or, as in my case, have a series of (hard) disk full errors happen all at once

You can see if this is the case for you by opening the properties/advanced settings of the Primary and Secondary IDE channels described by the OP

The method the OP describes will work, most of the time, and is definitely worth trying first.
However, coincidentally, it failed this weekend for me, and I dug further.

There are some registry edits which should fix it directly: MasterDeviceTimingMode etc. in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\{4D36E96A-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}

The most useful info about this problem may be found at: http://winhlp.com/WxDMA.htm

However, even thi solution did not work for me, so eventually I set
MasterDeviceTimingMode
MasterDeviceTimingAllowed
SlaveDeviceTimingMode
SlaveDeviceTimingAllowed
all to $FFFFFFFF.
This appaers to try to set the highest possible DMA setting, and XP itself drops down to an acceptable one.
This solved the problem for me.

There is also a Microsoft article describing the problem and a registry key which reduces the likliehood of it happening again at
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/817472

by cyberbiker

Thank you, Neal, for giving us a much more comprehensive understanding of the background problem.

by btljooz

Not long ago I had exactly the same problem with a CD/DVD drive on my Win XP puter. Only this is an OOOOLD Hitachi drive. I downloaded and ran the VBScript Script File" from #1. on the http://winhlp.com/WxDMA.htm site and it fixed the problem perfectly on the first try! And it?s still working GREAT! So give that one a try first ?Sometimes the ?K.I.S.S.? method is all that?s needed. Good luck!!!

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