I have clonedvd2 and anydvd software running on Dell dimension 4700. From November 05 - May 06 I could create backup dvds in less than 45 minutes total copy/burn time. I installed ASUS burner in early May 06 and burn/copy times increased to over 100 minutes total time. (cracked DVD damaged original drive...) I read your forum comments and asked computer tech to swap ASUS for a BenQ 1650 drive. After BenQ was installed, burn/copy times improved slightly, to 80 minutes. I have read ALL posts about DMA vs PIO mode. I have followed advice on winhlp.com - including uninstalling primary, secondary IDE, setting to DMA if available, I even used regedit to follow the advanced instructions for deleting masterdevicetimingmodeallowed values and modifying other settings in regedit as instructed by winhlp.com. After ALL of this, my Primary IDE continues to revert back to PIO mode. Burn/copy times still exceeding 80 minutes. I've also been contacting slysoft customer support - MANY times, and followed their advice. I'm at the end of my rope here - what else can I do? One email at the end of the winhlp.com article tells that someone else had tried everything and ended up having to purchase an extra IDE controller card. The writer says there was a problem with compatibility between IDE controller card and motherboard. Do I have any other options? Is there ANYTHING else I can try? pat
Hi there, Dell computers prefer CABLE SELECT to anything else Are both your drives/burners set to Cable Select ? From what I know, DMA will switch to PIO after a certain amount of errors. Stupid question, but is your IDE Cable a 80 pins conductor, or you have the old 40 pins ones ! This can be a big factor. Found this: http://winhlp.com/WxDMA.htm
Where do I check the "cable select" setting? The computer is 1.5 years old, so I would think I'd have a new-style pin connection, but I will look as soon as I shut it down later tonight. I did read the article that you highlighted on winhlp.com last night, and I believe this is what has happened, except uninstalling it did NOT fix the problem. I've uninstalled/reinstalled both the BenQ drive and the primary IDE drives at least 3 times. Plus, did the regedit changes...nothing worked. I have 2 primary IDE controllers and NO secondary IDE controllers right now. The other items listed under IDE ata/atapi controllers are: 2 listings for standard dual channel pci ide controller. I'm not sure why I have 2 primary IDE and 2 standard dual channels and NO secondary IDE? I'm not sure if this is related?? THANKS!!! pat
p4fb. Do this, go to My Computer,system properties, hardware tab, device manager. Don't uninstall the "drives". Uninstall the primary and secondary IDE channel [bold] Drivers[/bold]. Re-Boot your computer. Undertand this, you are uninstalling the IDE Channel Drivers. Not the drives. This will revert you drive/drives back to DMA mode.
thanks bunnyrip, I'm sorry, I mistyped drives instead of IDE control drivers. That IS what I uninstalled/reinstalled. I uninstalled ALL of them....the BenQ AND the primary AND secondary IDE control. When I rebooted, the primary IDE control showed back up on the device manager, but the secondary IDE control did not return to the list. After uninstalling secondary IDE, I ended up with 2 primary IDE channels listed and ZERO secondary IDE channel listed. It does NOT reset to DMA mode after reinstall. I may be missing the obvious here....but the reinstall I'm referring to is when windows recognizes there's "new hardware found" and it does the reinstall automatically. Do I need to do something in addition to that? I understand that the IDE control and the BenQ disk drive are 2 separate things... I don't know MUCH about this, so I really appreciate your input! pat
@p4fb, In the Advanced settings, make sure the drop down box for the IDE Channels say "DMA if available" before uninstalling the driver & re-booting.
What is all on the IDE cable? (the Cable your DVD drive is on? Do you have more then 1 drive installed?) As said before make sure you have the pin settings correct if you have more then 2 CD/DVD drives on the same cable. There are 2 ways to do this.... Some work best if you have Cable select set on both drives. Put your burrner at the end of the IDE cable and the other in the middle. (you set the PIN settings on the back of the CD/DVD optical drive. You aslo might try to set your DVD burrner to master and the other to slave. Again put the burrner at the end of the IDE cable and the other in the middle. You could also possibly have a bad IDE cable. Try replacing it with a new 1. You really dont need 80pin for Optical drives. But if you want an 80pin I bought one a few weeks ago for around $12. Also make sure your firmware is up to date. After you make adjustments then uninstall every IDE channel that is listed under IDE controlers. There was a member that had to do that the other day in order to put the drives back into DMA mode. He tried uninstalling the IDE channel that was in PIO mode but it still wouldnt go in. So he uninstalled all the IDE channels and rebooted and it finaly went into DMA mode.
I had the same problem, tried everything. Here is what worked for me. Hope this helps http://forums.us.dell.com/supportforums/board/message?board.id=dim_cdrom&message.id=122298#M122298
Thanks for your help everyone. I switched the order of the drives on the IDE cable - putting the burner at the end. I also went through all other steps as noted in the past post. Switching the order of the drives seemed to be the solution. I can now backup/burn a dvd in less than 20 minutes.
