DMA 2

[Guest_imported]

I'm wondering why my hard disks run very slow when I enable DMA in control panel/system...
Isn't this feature supposed to speed them up? Windows takes about 5 minutes to boot up with this option checked. Both my hard drives and mainboard support DMA.
Thanks

 

[butchrecon]

What OS are you using? What is the current transfer mode set to in IDE channel properties in system?

 

[Guest_imported]

Windows Millenium. I heard from someone that it's because my drive is booting up with a cd rom thats using PIO. How do I check the transfer mode?

 

[butchrecon]

Is the CDROM and Hard Drive on the Same IDE channel? If so separate them onto different channels. It can slow down if you are using the HDD and cdrom at the same time. Other than that it should be fine. Have you tried tweaking it it up? go to

http://www.3dspotlight.com

They have some pretty good system and HDD tweaks.

 

[Guest_imported]

I have 2 hard drives, 1 dvd rom and 1 ide burner. should I hook up both hard drives together on the 1 ide channel and the rom's on the other?

 

[butchrecon]

Yes thats probably the best way to go. Once that is done check to ensure both HDDs are using UDMA. Then when that is finished try the tweaks and let me know how it works. James Collins
Computer Hardware Engineer
A+, MCP

email: butchrecon@skyenet.net

 

[Guest_imported]

Ok, both hard drives are now hooked up to the same IDE channel. All four of my drives are using DMA so that's pretty cool. The only problem I have now is that my system seems to pause for about 1-2 secs, on occassions. Any ideas?

 

[butchrecon]

With WinME I am not sure. First defrag the drives then Put your Swap file on your NON-System (Second) drive. Set it to about 2 times your RAM if you have up to 128Meg. Or the same if you have 256 or more. Next in the System.ini file under vcache input the following (keeping format)
Chunksize=512
MinFileCache=8192
MaxFileCache=8192
if you have 128meg or more RAM make it about 16384. Many people have different settings they like to use. All I can say is experiment.

Under the 386Enh section add the following:
PageBuffers=32
Changing this setting from the 4k default up to 32k will boost your performance by increasing the page buffers used to store read and write information.

MinTimeSlice=40
This setting changes the time in milliseconds that Windows allows a Virtual Machine to run before another will begin to run. Originally 20.

MaxBPs=65530
This setting is used to adjust and set the size of 'break points' that Windows uses for its VMM (Virtual Memory Manager.) This setting is in bytes.

DMABufferSize=64
This setting assigns out the size of the 16bit DMA buffer for all DMA devices. The maximum size is 64 and the default size is 16.

ConservativeSwapfileUsage=1
This has to be one of the most valuable tweaks in the system.ini file, and it's another one of those give-it-away-in-the-name tweaks. This tweak disables the 'PageFile_Call_Async_Manager', which allows Windows to write out the swap during an idle in the Vfat. In other words, Windows will attempt to use your physical RAM as much as possible, and only write to the swapfile when the hard drive isn't busy. Those of you still running Windows 95 don't need to change this, because it is automatically disabled in '95.


Open up regedit and do the following:
Go to [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\FileSystem]. From there you should see a setting that says ReadAheadThreshold. To create it manually, right click in the key window and select new binary value. Type in ReadAheadThreshold (Case sensitive). Now, right click on that setting and select "modify". You should see a dialogue box similar to the below picture, except empty. Now just add 00 00 20 00 into it and click OK.

If you have problems with this email me and I can send you a reg file that you double click that will do it for you.
Also try Open up Notepad (Start, Run, "notepad" (OK)). Depending on how much memory you have, put the appropriate values in...
Under 128mb Ram:
Mystring = (16000000)

128mb or More:
Mystring = (80000000)

Save it as "Memory.vbe" (including the quotes!). Close as many programs as you can, then run (double click) this handy little script to free your memory whenever your computer is feeling sluggish.

The following helps with system start up times.
In the MSDOS.SYS file, add the following lines:

Doublebuffer=1
Dblspace=0
Drvspace=0
Logo=0
Bootdelay=0

You may need to remove the write-protect attribute of this file to save. To do so, simply go into the file's properties and remove it. Make sure you put it back on when you are done though.

In the CONFIG.SYS file, add the following line:

Stacks=0,0

For more tweaks go to the link stated above. Those should help a lot.

Hope this helps. James Collins
Computer Hardware Engineer
A+, MCP

email: butchrecon@skyenet.net

 

[Guest_imported]

I applied the above and the computer seems to be running fine now. Thanks very much for your help

 

[butchrecon]

Glad to be of assistance. ;-) James Collins
Computer Hardware Engineer
A+, MCP

email: butchrecon@skyenet.net

 

[pauldmallett]

Hi
This all good stuff, thanks to James Collins. I use a freeware or rather postcardware program called Cacheman to configure disk caching i.e. the settings under vcache. It can be found at

http://www.outertech.com/index2.html

It works for me.
PAUL

 

[newbie123]

Will the above tweak work with windows 2000 or windows xp?

 

[butchrecon]

Nope. This one is for Win9x systems. I have tweaks for Win2K listed in the Windows 2000 Pro FAQ section. Check them out. James Collins
Systems Support Engineer
A+, MCP

email: butchrecon@skyenet.net

Please let us (Tek-tips members) know if the solutions we provide are helpful to you. Not only do they help you but they may help others.

 

[nelljack]

I have a AMD-K6 3D 301MHz system with 95/98 upgrade, a 9.54GB WD HDD (FAT32), and a Conner 1.18GB (FAT) HDD, IDE CD ROM, and CD-RW (NTI) drives, and 128MB SDRAM. My system began slowing down, and almost every 2 seconds was writing/searching/looking for(?) something.

I got on the tek-tips and found the "DMA" responses from May 2001 from butchrecon.

Thank you Butch! I did all you had listed in the forum and now my system is running better.

The only thing I did BEFORE any of this was to make back up copies of all the files except the one using regedit. I had already made a backup of my files to CD.

If there is something wrong, I am not able to see it. But the changes I made have been working. This has saved me a little time in not having to reformat and start over, yet....

 

[Guest_imported]

How do i check that 'DMA' is enabled in MS millennium? everyone says its in the device manger-diskdrives-properties. but its not!
any help appreciated.