Stuck in PIO

  • Thread starter Thread starter Bitter
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Bitter

I can not get the Primary IDE channel to transfer in DMA
transfer mode - it stays in PIO. I have removed and
reinstalled drivers for the hard drive (western digital
160G)and for the primary channel. I believe the problem
is due to multiple time-out/CRC errors.
 
Hi Bitter,

So you have Transfer Mode : DMA If Available selected but it only ever shows
PIO, yes ?

If so could well be, XP will start at the highest speed it can, but if it
gets any errors on a channel it will negotiate down to a lower speed, if it
gets more errors it drops down again and so on.

Do you have the correct 80 wire cable? This is important for drives of
speeds of ATA66 and higher.

If you're still using the old 40 wire this can cause the Cyclic Redundancy
Errors because the cable can't cope with data transfer rates.
The errors you describe could also be a stick of memory going bad, DMA
(Direct memory access) transfers data straight from the disk to memory, and
if the memory is causing a lot of retries it can look disk related.

Does this disk share the channel with a second device, if so how are the
jumpered. I never use cabel select, always master/slave. The master should
be at the end of the cable (Black Connector) the slave in the middle (Grey
Connector) and the blue connector to the motherboard.

If you do have a second device on this channel, what speed is it running at
in XP?

Check the speed deteremined by the bios for devices on this channel. When
the system boots up, normally on the second black and white bios
initialization screen, just above the irq table, is a list of ide devices,
their size and the speed detected, What is displayed for this disk and if
applicable the second device ?

Do you have UDMA and use block I/O enabled in the bios for this channel.
Most Bioses have PIO settings and UDMA settings for each device on each
channel.

You could also go to the western digital website and download their disk
diags http://support.wdc.com/download/index.asp#dlgtools

And check out your memory using the windows memory diagnostic

http://oca.microsoft.com/en/windiag.asp

Paul
 
Also note that this condition will stay with you, even after you correct the
problem. To reset everything back to normal, delete the offending IDE
channel. Then reboot the computer. Upon a restart, you will find that the
condition will have been corrected!
 
I have this happen to me when I try to play a scratched
cd or dvd several times. If it can't read it, it switches
to PIO mode, and can't switch back.

To fix it, simply uninstall the IDE channel in your
hardware manager, and restart. It will auto-detect your
fastest speed.

If it still says PIO only, then your cd/dvd-rom can
only handle PIO, or it may need some of the more
technical help listed in the other reply. But,
uninstalling and letting WINDOWS re-install on restart
always works for me.

Hope this helps
 
Try checking your Bios settings under Standard CMOS settings,
and look at the settings for each drive and remember to set
drives to 32 bit transfer mode. I had the same problem for
months before I decided to read my motherboard manual
properly :)
 
-----Original Message-----
I can not get the Primary IDE channel to transfer in DMA
transfer mode - it stays in PIO. I have removed and
reinstalled drivers for the hard drive (western digital
160G)and for the primary channel. I believe the problem
is due to multiple time-out/CRC errors.
.
Hello:
Click to expand...

Thank you to responding to my dilemma. Below are more
details to what has occurred.

I installed and formatted a Western Digital (WD) 160G hard
drive (HD) to augment the 40G that came with the Dell
computer (The OS is XP Home Edition version 5.1.2600I
purchased. The computer came with a DVD-ROM so I added a
Pioneer DVDR-106D DVD burner.

When the 40G HD is operating alone it runs at DMA mode 5,
however when I connect up (either as cable select or
slave) the 160G HD the 40G drive drops to DMA mode 2.
The 160G is always at PIO mode. As I stated in the
previous email I have uninstalled and reinstalled the 160G
HD, drivers for HD, primary and secondary IDE channel all
to no avail. I have not check the Bios for the information
you mentioned because I am uncertain how to do that. I
attempted to down load the Western Digital tools you
suggested, however they crash when I go to start them - I
have emailed WD about this. I do have a set of WD
utilities and when I run the quick test there are no
errors reported. I thought about performing the long
version, but that takes hours to perform.

I have been on the web researching the issue and this
problem seems to be an XP issue that is occurring to other
folks. MicroSoft (MS) has a hotfix for certain XP DMA
issues if it is a Time-Out/CRC error. But again I was
uncertain about how to make the changes they discussed. I
have contacted Dell and they told me to check out a MS
web page that described DMA and its system requirements to
use it. That was classic.

I would appreciated any additional input.

Thank you, Bitter
 
Why not move the dvd onto the same channel as the 40 GB, and try the 160GB
on the other, as master, provided of course you have 2 x 80 wire cables.

You are using 80 wire cables I hope !!
40 wire is no good for devices above ata66

If that doesn't work, provide the model of system and I'll have a look at
the manual on dells website for what we need to do in the bios.

Paul
 
I am out of PIO torture. Thank you for your help and offer
of continued help.

After perusing the responses to 'Stuck in PIO' & 'Still
Stuck in PIO' I decide to analyze the Device
Configuration "file". It turns out that the Slave drive
for both the Primary and Secondary IDE channels was off (I
guess I should have looked at that earlier). So I turned
them to 'Auto' and what do you know - th hard drives are
both in DMA mode 5 and the DVD burner is in DMA mode 2.
Again thank you for all your help.

Bitter (but to a lesser degree)
 
Glad you got it working.!

Paul


Bitter said:
I am out of PIO torture. Thank you for your help and offer
of continued help.

After perusing the responses to 'Stuck in PIO' & 'Still
Stuck in PIO' I decide to analyze the Device
Configuration "file". It turns out that the Slave drive
for both the Primary and Secondary IDE channels was off (I
guess I should have looked at that earlier). So I turned
them to 'Auto' and what do you know - th hard drives are
both in DMA mode 5 and the DVD burner is in DMA mode 2.
Again thank you for all your help.

Bitter (but to a lesser degree)
Click to expand...
 
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