DVD Drive REALLY slow

BlackWizard

I just got a new motherboard to replace my broken one.

The MB seems to be working well. I installed windows on it but I installed the wrong
one (wrong version) But during its brief life, I did test a few things just to see
if all was well with the hardware. It appeared that the DVD-RW drive was really
slow at reading CDs. I would insert a CD and go into my computer where after
entering into the CD it would take up to 4 mins to change into a subdirectory. I
thought it was just some sort of driver issue and thought it would go away with
a fresh install of windows. But I tried an old CD-RW drive and it worked fine! Fast
as usual.

But as I'm installing windows with the same hardware setup, its blooming taking
forever!! It must be caught up reading from the CD at a really low speed.

Any ideas on whats causing this issue?

Its connected well. Has its own power connector now that is not sharded with
the harddrive (thought Id give the DVD drive its own one incase its having
power issues.)

Ruu_Old

Is DMA enabled?

BlackWizard

How do I know if it is?

BlackWizard

IDE DMA transfer access ENABLED

Shall I change this id DISABLE?

Found this in the bios btw

BlackWizard

That didnt help

Its still very slow.

I gotta head off to bed before I collapse on my laptop. So I'll take the drive out
of the PC tomorrow and see if it works properly in a different PC.

Guess I cant install CSS till this thing works properly again

deadl0ck

No - You also need to check DMA in Windows settings as follows:

Go to "System Properties" (Windows Key + Pause)
Select "Hardware" Tab
Click "Device Manager"
Click on the "+" beside "IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers
Right-Click on "Secondary IDE Channel" (I assume DVD is on the secondary)
Select "Properties"
Click "Advanced Settings" tab
Ensure "Transfer Mode" for both devices is set to "DMA if available"

Let us know how you get on !

BlackWizard

I went in and it seems that Im using NVIDIA nForce4 Parellel ATA Controller and
the NVIDIA nForce Serial ATA Controller.

I've not touched it at all so is that the right setup?

deadl0ck

Looks OK, but I would have my Hard DIsk as Master on Primary IDE channel, and my DVD as master on secondary.
WHat does anydoby else think ?

Also - check you have the latest drivers for you mobo components

Ruu_Old

deadl0ck wrote:

Looks OK, but I would have my Hard DIsk as Master on Primary IDE channel, and my DVD as master on secondary.
WHat does anydoby else think ?

Also - check you have the latest drivers for you mobo components

Agreed, thats the normal layout of the drives I would have thought.

BlackWizard

Ill switch the harddisk onto the primary channel and see what happens.

I just plugged in my external harddrive into the back USB port. I got a BSOD. So
maybe I have the wrong drivers installed. Ill download them again and double
check I'm getting the right ones.

I've a DFI Lanparty AMD NF-4 . I can just download nforce 4 drivers from Nvidia
right?

8T8

Yes use the drivers from NVIDIA's site these ones specifically.

Try changing the jumper on the DVDRW drive to cable select.

Also NVIDIA storage drivers have incompatibility's with certain DVDRW drives it is best to not install them (for the PATA controller at least, SATA is okay) but you already have because via your screen shot we can see the nForce 4 Parallel ATA controller is present which is the NVIDIA storage driver.

If you have installed the wrong drivers I would recommend formatting & starting the install again for Windows as it could be more of a headache getting it stable over the wrong drivers.

Still if you want to proceed install the drivers from the link I gave above.
Chipset - yes

Network - yes - when prompted to install the NAM (Network Access Manager) say no it will only cause you grief. If you have already installed the NAM uninstall it.

Storage - yes

Audio - up to you, but you can use alternate more up to date drivers from Realtek or whoever makes the sound chip or use the stock NVIDIA.

After the system reboots and you get back into Windows go into the device manager and bring up the properties of the "nForce 4 Parallel ATA Controller" go to the driver tab now click on roll back driver.

From the choices of drivers given select the "Standard Dual Channel PCI IDE Controller" & proceed the system will need to reboot after the selection is made and when you get back into Windows it will change the driver to the Microsoft one and re-install the driver for the DVDRW drive as well.

BlackWizard

I tried a few things on the weekend and just figured it might be that windows
2003 doesn't work with the DVD player. Although I never had this problem before.

So I went to reinstall windows and put on XP. Well for the last few months the
boot sector on my hard drive has been broke so It never boots unless the windows
cd is in. This time, during the XP installation when it copies the files to the
hard drive and reboots the computer, the PC boots from the CD instead of asking
to boot from the CD. I usually dont react and the PC boots up normally. It just
likes the windows CD in the drive

So as soon as I have time this week I'll have to look into fixing the boot sector
and installing XP. The boot sector was broken thanks to a Linux installation.

8T8

To repair the boot sector, boot the XP CD and when prompted to run the recovery console. Now from the command prompt type & press enter

fixboot
fixmbr

Once both are done type exit to leave the recovery console and the system will reboot. After that if you have a working XP install on the HD it should boot from that if not it will boot to the CD so re-install XP.

BlackWizard

Is there any other way I can repair the boot sector?

When i press F2 to go into automated system recovery, It asks me to insert a
floppy disk with stuff on it.

Im using an old CD drive and its so much faster at doing stuff like when windows
starts to copy files from the CD. I think it might be my DVD drive that is broke.

Ill have to test it in another PC to be sure.

BlackWizard

Well when putting in a spare hard drive to install windows on so that I can get a
few things done while fixing the Raptor I noticed that I'm still using the old MB
cables. The cables have wrote on them CDROM and HDD. I had the HDD one on
the DVD drive and the CDROM one on the harddrive.

After putting in the spare hard drive the PC booted up normally. Normally being it
was able to use the CD to boot up windows on my harddrive. But there is no
windows on the harddrive so that really didnt help.

I decided to install windows onto the drive anyway. During the installation I got
the following BSOD, "a thread tried to release a resource it did not own" .

So what does this mean? My CPU is broke? Ill run Memtest over night I guess to
see if its my RAM.

At this point I'm thinking of just getting rid of the PC, but Ill need to know
whats wrong with it anyway... :mad:

Oh! Just testing out memtest making sure it works.. after a few minutes its
found 1 error

8T8

BlackWizard wrote:

Is there any other way I can repair the boot sector?

When i press F2 to go into automated system recovery, It asks me to insert a
floppy disk with stuff on it.

Im using an old CD drive and its so much faster at doing stuff like when windows
starts to copy files from the CD. I think it might be my DVD drive that is broke.

Ill have to test it in another PC to be sure.

That is not the recovery console. The prompt for the recovery console looks like this.

As per the Memtest+ test result that is what I was beginning to suspect as well so I'm not surprised it could be a timing issue with the RAM but probably unlikely if you get a clean test result if you pull one of the DIMM's from the system.

BlackWizard

After 15hours I have 61 errors in locations 922.5mb and 1517.0mb

I'm going to stop running memtest now. I think I've got enough information

So is my RAM completely useless now?

Im leaning towards building a new PC. But all that I can sell is my motherboard,
CPU, GPU and Power Supply. So ill have to sell separately and thats awkward..

Do you think my old motherboard isnt broke, infact it was my RAM that was
causing it not to boot up even into BIOS?

Thanks for the pic! I think I remember seeing that. But I've installed OS's so
many times that I dont read whats on screen anymore lol

8T8

So is my RAM completely useless now?

If you have more than one RAM module (called a DIMM) in the system remove one and test again to see if the error's occur as one DIMM might be good and one might be bad.

If one of the DIMM's is still fine then system will be okay with just the one DIMM though it will run with reduced performance.