IDE0 in PIO mode

[Andrew L.]

Noticed my performance was severely degraded and noted that my IDE0
Master is using PIO mode. Several articles on the web describe that
repeated I/O errors will lead to windows downstepping the access mode
until PIO is used. They also describe how to fix it by 1) editing the
registry to delete values which store the error history and 2) by
uninstalling the ide controller and re-booting.

Have tried both and neither one works. I ran chkdsk /f, and have run
maxtor diagnostics, both w/o problem.

This behavior is described in Article ID: 817472 of MSKB...

I have also tried the hotfix... no luck

 

[R. McCarty]

Did you add the Key name "ResetErrorCountersOnSuccess"
to each IDE Channel and set the value = 1 ?

 

[Malke]

Did you add the Key name "ResetErrorCountersOnSuccess"
to each IDE Channel and set the value = 1 ?

Just to add to Mr. McCarty's good advice, if you followed everything
here: http://www.michna.com/kb/WxDMA.htm and are still having issues,
then the hardware may be bad. Test the drive with a diagnostic utility
downloaded from the mftr.'s website. If the drive tests OK, try it in
another computer to be sure. You won't be able to boot it, but you
could slave it and test it again there. The reason for that extra
testing is you want to try and determine if the problem is with the
drive or your motherboard.

Malke

 

[Andrew L.]

Here's an update:
Turns out I had not yet actually tried the hotfix. But, when I did, it
reported that it could not be installed due to my system being more
recent than that intended...So I opened the hotfix .exe to see what
was inside and lo and behold it is none other than an atapi.sys! Now
that's familiar...atapi.sys is widely reported as being flaky in even
SP2. I had problems with it causing timeouts on reads from dvd/cdr and
had found a solution that worked in replacing atapi.sys with an older
version. Maybe that would work here? Well, the problem is (Ithink)
that uninstalling the ide controller causes atapi.sys to be reloaded
from the cabs, in this case the new "buggy" one. So I did the registry
edit, adding the two keys noted below by R McCarty, and then
uninstalled the controller for ide0, the offender. On reboot, I went
to safe mode prompt only, and replaced atapi.sys with that older one
and rebooted again. So far it's working!