r2d2-860

Hard drive is apparently operating in PIO mode w/o DMA. Have run all diagnostics I can get a hold of... All pass. HD is Seagate 60GB and passes Seagate diagnostics, Dell boot time DMA test passes, drive passes every test, memory passes, CPU passes, motherboard passes
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Machine is about 10x slower than it was 2 days ago. On first occurence, Scandisk indicated volume was dirty & some free memory was indicated as taken. Have run virus checks, registry checks, malware, etc. Nothing shows up. Have defragged with DOS level and Windows level.

Old benchmark had disk read/write at 18MB/19MB /sec. Now is 115 MB read/1.2MB write. on same benchmark.

Is it possible somehow that driver is chosing - for whatever reason - not to use DMA? If so, is there a way to get the DMA back in the loop?

TheMatt

Go to Start > (Settings) > Control Panel > Administrative tools > Computer Management > Device manager > IDE/ATAPI controllers > Primary IDE Channel > Right click > Properties > Advanced settings tab

There you can set the drive to use DMA instead of PIO.

r2d2-860

Thanks, Matt. That route ends up with "DMA if available" and below it the transfer mode is "PIO Mode". I have since found a hardware conflict under "System Devices" between the "SMBus Controller and the 3rd instance of "Systen Board". Neither has a driver. I am somewhat reluctant to uninstall either for fear of no return...

TheMatt

Set it to DMA if available and select OK. Reboot and it should stay at DMA.

If you are not having any other driver issues I would leave those two other things alone.

r2d2-860

Hey Matt -- I've probably rebooted 6 or 7 times in the last 3 days - takes about 45 minutes to do a warm restart. It's always been set to DMA If Available. One of the pieces in conflict is the SMBus Controller. I think this drive is a serial ATA. IF so, this might be the controller that has the hardware conflict. It uses the Intel 945GM/PM+82801 Mobil chip set... Don't how much of it Dell is using, but it does a whole lot of stuff - like USB, Serial ATA, PCI, Graphics, and on...

I have even upgraded the BIOS, but will give it one more try. Need to step away for a while. Back later.

TheMatt

It sounds like a possible driver issue. You said it started happening a couple days ago, correct? If it is a recent issue , then I would perform a system restore to a couple days before this became an issue. The steps for using the System Restore are detailed here.

r2d2-860

System Restore took a while, but it worked magic. Disk speed back where it was . And surprisingly enough, the memory conflict is still there. Guess you were right - doesn't seem to matter.

Based on how/when it happened, my best guess is that something - a driver or the registry took a hit while I was listening to music w/ Winamp. For a few seconds, all kinds of crazy stuff happened - reverse video, incomplete pages all over the plpace then slow...Then it hung. When I rebooted, Scandisk found some errors and said the "volume is dirty" went down hill from there.

Thanks man. Gonna check out the car talk. I have a Cobra replica I would like to sell, maybe someone is interested.

TheMatt

No problem.