Club CDFreaks - Knowledge is Power - View Single Post - Troubleshooting: Enabling/Checking DMA in Windows Vista, XP, 2000, Me, 9x

**Womble** · 28-02-2007

Enabling/ Checking DMA In Windows Vista

The first thing to do is to right click on “Computer”. You can use the icon in the Start Menu or the one on the Desktop if you have one. Once you have right clicked on it then choose “Properties”.

The next thing to do is to click the “Device Manager” link which can be found at the top left of the screen.

Under device manager you need to find your hard drives. These are normally found under “IDE ATA/ATAPI Controllers”. Under this you will have a number of items. The ones that we are interested in are the ones with channel in their name.

You will need to do the same to all of the ones with channel in their name. To bring up the next window you will need to double click on the item. We will take the first ATA Channel 0 to start with.

Note: Depending upon your motherboard chipset and drivers you may have different names for your channels along the lines Primary IDE Channel or something similar.

This is the screen that will come up. The device with Target ID 0 is the primary device on the channel and Target ID 1 is the slave device. In the “Current Mode” box you should be seeing somthing like “DMA If Available” or a specifc DMA mode such as "Ultra DMA Mode 2".

If not and you are seeing “PIO Only” then you need to click on the line with the PIO reference and then tick the box underneath that says "Enable DMA".

To finished simply click the “OK” button to exit the windows. You will now need to check your other IDE channels for the same thing.

Now you will have to reset your computer for the changes to take effect.

If when you have restarted the computer one of the channels is back on PIO-Only mode the last thing you can try is to uninstall the channel from the Device Manager window. When you then restart the computer it will force windows to reinstall the drivers and hopefully use the DMA if available mode.

(Added note: DO NOT delete the IDE channel if your hard drive containing Windows is also on that channel! An alternative to deleting the channel can be found in this thread. -C64K)

28-02-2007	#6 (permalink)
Womble Section Administrator & Reviewer Join Date: Feb 2003 Location: On a Spoon! Posts: 4,686	Re: Troubleshooting: Enabling/Checking DMA in Windows Vista, XP, 2000, Me, 9x Enabling/ Checking DMA In Windows Vista The first thing to do is to right click on “Computer”. You can use the icon in the Start Menu or the one on the Desktop if you have one. Once you have right clicked on it then choose “Properties”. The next thing to do is to click the “Device Manager” link which can be found at the top left of the screen. Under device manager you need to find your hard drives. These are normally found under “IDE ATA/ATAPI Controllers”. Under this you will have a number of items. The ones that we are interested in are the ones with channel in their name. You will need to do the same to all of the ones with channel in their name. To bring up the next window you will need to double click on the item. We will take the first ATA Channel 0 to start with. Note: Depending upon your motherboard chipset and drivers you may have different names for your channels along the lines Primary IDE Channel or something similar. This is the screen that will come up. The device with Target ID 0 is the primary device on the channel and Target ID 1 is the slave device. In the “Current Mode” box you should be seeing somthing like “DMA If Available” or a specifc DMA mode such as "Ultra DMA Mode 2". If not and you are seeing “PIO Only” then you need to click on the line with the PIO reference and then tick the box underneath that says "Enable DMA". To finished simply click the “OK” button to exit the windows. You will now need to check your other IDE channels for the same thing. Now you will have to reset your computer for the changes to take effect. If when you have restarted the computer one of the channels is back on PIO-Only mode the last thing you can try is to uninstall the channel from the Device Manager window. When you then restart the computer it will force windows to reinstall the drivers and hopefully use the DMA if available mode. (Added note:* DO NOT delete the IDE channel if your hard drive containing Windows is also on that channel! An alternative to deleting the channel can be found in this thread. -C64K)* __________________ New and updated signature, for her pleasure!! Have you meet my friend? His name is Devils Advocate! You have been warned. My Review / Gaming PC <- It's getting old Join CDFreaks.Com for a chance to win a date with me. SERIOUSLY -> First 5 people to PM me something funny can see it here on 4,000+ posts. Ding Ding Ding. We have a winner. Step forward Shellie Mae!!!