DVD drive reading performance

[yorkshirepudding]

i bought a brand new HP Pavillion with a HP 640b Lightscribe DVD/RW for christmas and its ace, the one thing that really lets it down is DVD and music CD playback and even video game cutscenes playback, all of which is really slow and stutters a lot, now its not the discs ive tried old and new with no joy, and the PC cant possibly be out of resources cos its new. ive turned of virus scanners and everything.

now i tried to download a new firmware update but the installation programme says the drive isnt present when i can see it on the device manager

i think that the drive has a problem while reading data is now problem its things like video.

one last thing i checked were the ribbon cables inside both drives had seperate IDE cables (good) but the jumpers on the drive were set to cable select i changed them to master on each cable and the DVD was fine then but the HD wouldnt boot, so i hastily reset that back to cable selet on the HD and it worked fine.

Duff drive you think? i do

 

[BadBigBen]

Check your DMA settings of the DVD, device manager double click on the Primary or Secondary IDE channel (which ever is your DVD attached to) and set it to use DMA when available...


Ben

"If it works don't fix it! If it doesn't use a sledgehammer..."

 

[cdogg]

By default, Windows XP uses the option (DMA when available) for both IDE channels and all devices attached. However, even with this setting enabled, you have to check to see what mode is actually listed to be in use. PIO Mode is one that can cause problems, but some optical drives (CD-ROM, DVD-ROM, etc) are not DMA compatible.

It's listed under the "Advanced Settings" tab where Ben told you to go above.

In addition, I would contact HP since this is fairly new. They might already be aware of a known issue with your model.

~cdogg
"Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." - Albert Einstein
[tab][navy]For general rules and guidelines to get better answers, click here:[/navy] faq219-2884

 

[yorkshirepudding]

cheers guys ill try it out i think its worth trying to wrangle a new drive from HP everytime ive delt with these sorts of problems in the past they have been very helpful. and i think HP know about it the UK has a dedicated 640 drive helpline LOL

 

[cdogg]

As long as it's not a problem within Windows, then replacing the drive might help. Let us know what HP says...

~cdogg
"Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." - Albert Einstein
[tab][navy]For general rules and guidelines to get better answers, click here:[/navy] faq219-2884

 

[yorkshirepudding]

This is an odd one folks

i took a spare CD-ROM drive home from work, installed it, no problems ran perfect, then i re-installed the origional drive and it worked brialliantly! i have no idea what i did LOL

 

[BadBigBen]

Windows has an annoying habbit... when it encounters DMA errors (6 in a ROW I belief) it will turn off DMA and revert to PIO...

Now by adding another drive this Counter may have become reset, thus when you reinstalled the Original Drive it worked as it should...

just some thoughts...

Ben

"If it works don't fix it! If it doesn't use a sledgehammer..."

 

[cdogg]

Also, removing the drive would have removed it from Device Manager. Perhaps having that removed and readded was all that was needed?

Oh well, glad you got it working!


~cdogg
"Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." - Albert Einstein
[tab][navy]For general rules and guidelines to get better answers, click here:[/navy] faq219-2884