98 system set up problem after DMA setting on IDE

[AlexmacG]

Wishing to utilise DMA access on my hard drive and using microsofts debug to confirm that DMA2 is OK for the Hard Drive (one only on Primary IDE a Fujutsu) I selected DMA on the Hard drive driver settings (control panel/system). BIOS had always been set to 'auto detect' for UDMA.

...oooops silly me!

Also set DMA access for CDR and CDRW with no apparent problem.


Since then PC unreliable, freezes at times, Primary IDE driver reports the dreaded asterisk 'there is a problem' and hard drive no longer in system hardware list to change back to 'no DMA' - unless I disable UDMA in BIOS. Can't help but feel drive is slower and system hangs still occur.

Any ideas how to revert to original setting or get DMA to work?

 

[BLEW2]

restore registry using pre-dma-changr back up

 

[AlexmacG]

Ah yes,thanks........

......and if I've not done a registry backup? (might have an early backup on a Norton Rescue disk)....any guidance?

 

[BLEW2]

isn't the registry automatically backed up when you start up?i think that you can come up from a floppy and restore from there from a selection of registry back-ups

 

[BOKA]

1. Get rid of DMA settings for CD drives (just to see if that works).
2. Go to REGEDIT, look under HKLM\Enum\ESDI\... - there should be a key with the name of your HDD the way you see it in Device Manager (for me it is "Generic IDE Disk type 55&quot, and under this key one more key with your HDD ID (for me it is "MF&CHILD00.....&quot. Under that last key there should be a binary value "DMACurrentlyUsed". Change it from 01 to 00.

Good luck.

 

[BLEW2]

RESTORING REGISTRY

1)boot from hd as normal but HOLD DOWN the CTRL key.
2)at menu,select COMMAND PROMPT ONLY
3)AT C prompt do scanreg/restore enter
4)menu appears giving list of registry back-ups and dates
5)select back-up that was before DMA change
PS scanreg/? gives list of options
PPS in general it sounds as if your current hd driver doesn't support DMA and may need updating
good luck ..... Barry

 

[JeffTH]

AlexmacG, did you attempt to set DMA for all three drives at once (hd, cd-rom, cd-rw)? If so, once you get back to a good state, do the process again, except this time only set DMA for the hd, go through the reboot process as requested, then set DMA for the cd-rom, reboot, and then set DMA for the cd-rw.

I had this happen recently when I tried to set DMA for both my dvd and cd-rw at the same time. I received a boot error, and had to restore my registry from a known good copy (via Eru). Once I got my registry back I enabled DMA for only one drive at a time and haven't had a hiccup since.

 

[AlexmacG]

Thanks guys for all the help.
In the end I have been forced to reload op system and progs etc. as my hard drive has been failing, and recovery became more and more problematic until the Norton files themselves were damaged!! This (failing drive) could have been the problem all along. So I now got a small(ish) Maxtor primary drive and a new 40G drive for data (Western Digital).

I used WD Data Lifeguard available from their web site to set up the drives and copy data etc and now both drives work to their max speed under UDMA2 and 5! Also CDROM drives OK.

Machine seems a lot faster and not a crash in sight for a few days! Tempting fate there eh?