Lately my system (PIII 600, XP Pro, 512MB) has slowed to a crawl, and this is especially apparent when playing MP3s (hence the EU2 relevance - music stutters) and starting programs (looong load times). Starting EU now takes 30 secs before the screen turns black (from the desktop), and a further minute(!) of looking at the start-up screen!
I've noticed that this stuttering/crawling is related to disk access, so I decided to investigate.
For some reason Windows has decided to switch of DMA on my primary IDE channel! In device manager it is set to "DMA if possible," but shows "PIO only" in "current settings." There's no manual override for this as far as I can see. I checked my BIOS settings, and they appear fine - UDMA 2 is enabled for both hard disks on IDE 0.
What on Earth can be wrong? I tried a Google search, and it came up with a Microsoft article, apparently saying that Win XP reverts to PIO if DMA times out 4 times, but unfourtunately the link was dead.
Why on Earth has Windows all of a sudden decided to go the PIO way? I suspect a link to a USB device I installed at about the same time as my problems started, but uninstalling it has not helped.
Any tips will be much appreciated. ("Try re-installing Windows" is not a tip...
)
I've noticed that this stuttering/crawling is related to disk access, so I decided to investigate.
For some reason Windows has decided to switch of DMA on my primary IDE channel! In device manager it is set to "DMA if possible," but shows "PIO only" in "current settings." There's no manual override for this as far as I can see. I checked my BIOS settings, and they appear fine - UDMA 2 is enabled for both hard disks on IDE 0.
What on Earth can be wrong? I tried a Google search, and it came up with a Microsoft article, apparently saying that Win XP reverts to PIO if DMA times out 4 times, but unfourtunately the link was dead.
Why on Earth has Windows all of a sudden decided to go the PIO way? I suspect a link to a USB device I installed at about the same time as my problems started, but uninstalling it has not helped.
Any tips will be much appreciated. ("Try re-installing Windows" is not a tip...
)
