Footnote ...
Friday, August 7, 2009 at 6:50 pm
Windows XP Annoyances Discussion Forum
Posted by normanw
(1284 messages posted)
It seems quite common for so-called registry cleaners, including
some of the best-known ones, to force the switch frm DMA to PIO
mode, which is yet another good reason for using such snake-oil
applications.
‘There’s always tomorrow. At least, there always has been, so far.’ – Keith Waterhouse
On Tuesday, March 17, 2009 at 9:32 pm, normanw wrote:
>In view of the number of complaints of slow-
>running computers that apper on this forum,
>the follownig is offered in the hope it may
>help to ease some of the frustration.
>
>When trying to restore normal operating speed to a
>computer that has become sluggish, the usual clearing
>out of junk files and pruning of startup programs
>sometimes makes little difference.
>
>An item usually overlooked, but which has a dramatic
>influence on a computer's speed, is the hard disc's
>data transfer mode.
>
>In Windows XP this is set to DMA by default but if
>more than a certain number of errors occurs during
>disc access, Windows resets it to PIO mode and
>refuses to allow DMA to be restored. However,
>there is a fairly simple manual method to achieve
>this as follows.
>
>
>CHECK WHETHER DMA IS ACTIVE
>===========================
>
>First, to check whether or not your disc is operating
>in DMA mode, right-click My Computer and select the
>Hardware tab.
>
>Press Device Manager.
>
>Select IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers.
>
>Double-click Primary IDE Channel.
>
>Select the Advanced Settings tab.
>
>Under Device 0, the value in Transfer Mode
>should be DMA if available.
>
>(Ignore the settings under Device 1 for now.)
>
>Under Current Transfer Mode the value should be
>a DMA mode.
>
>If either of these two fields contains PIO and
>offers no DMA alternative, you need to restore
>DMA operation to the disc as detailed below.
>
>
>
>RESTORE DMA MODE
>==============
>
>WARNING: This procedure requires a modification of the
>registry, so be sure to back it up before proceeding.
>
>1. Make sure you are logged-in to an adminstrator account.
>2. Run regedit and navigate to:
>
> HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\{4D36E96A-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}
>
>Take great care to select the correct key because there will be
>many in which the section within the brackets differs
>by only one or two digits and/or letters.
>
>3. Click the plus sign to the left of the key to expand
>the list of subkeys, which will include several numbers
>such as 0000, 0001, 0002, etc.
>
>4. Open each of these subkeys in turn until you find the
>one in which the DriverDesc Data value is Primary IDE Channel
>
>5. Locate MasterIdDataCheckSum further down the list
>and delete it.
>
>6. Exit regedit and reboot.
>
>
>Repeat the DMA check procedure above to confirm that DMA
>is now active.
>
>-------------------
>
>You can repeat the process for the Device 1 on the
>primary IDE channel and also for both devices, if any
>on the secondary channel. Note that CD/DVD drives will
>operate at a lower DMA setting than a hard disc and this
>will be reflected in the reported DMA modes.
>
>
>SUGGESTED CLEANUP PROCEDURE
>===========================
>
>When attempting to restore the computer's speed, it is
>suggested that you follow this sequence:
>
>1. Check for DMA mode and restore if necessary.
>
>2. Clear out all temporary and junk files - CCleaner is
>recommended for this.
>
>2. Use msconfig to disable all unnecessary programs at startup.
>
>3. Defragment the disc, including a boot-time defragmentation.
>Routine defragmentation is not really necessary under Win XP
>but it is still a good idea to do it occasionally say, once
>or twice a year, especially if you run many different
>applications and process large amounts of data.
>
>Defragmentation in the current instance ensures you are
>doing everything possible to restore the machine's
>performance. The Windows built-in defragmenter is better
>than nothing but does not do a very good job.
>Fully-fedged utilities such as Diskeeper are far more
>thorough.
>
>
>Note: If the disc access setting keeps reverting from
>DMA to PIO mode, this indicates a more serious underlying
>problem of repeated errors that needs to be investigated.
>
>
>
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