PCTech Forums

most of the time my dvd writer and cd rom drive take ages to read ay discs i put itno them and sometimes if they cant read the data it freezes the whole computer up, I have various brands of disc so i dont think it could be a media problem, and both the drives areonly six months old, has anyone got any suggestions before i contact my retailer!!

Does this slow access happen on audio CDs as well or just data disks?
Do you finalize your disks or just finalize the session?

Is your Operating System pre-Win2000? If so, and you don't have much memory, you may be running low on resources. Do they run better after a reboot?
A couple other thing to try would be:
The Disconnect property being enabled under the device driver properties. My Computer / Properties / Device Manager / CDROM or CD-RW. This option should only checked if your devices are SCSI devices.

Disabling DMA will often increase stability of ATAPI drivers and prevent problems such as buffer underruns with CD burners.

brad

im running XP sp1 and cant seem to find these options to disconnect property or disable dma

In WinXp:
"Right Click" My Computer / Properties / Hardware / Device Manager / IDE ATA/ATAPI Controllers /I assume your cdroms are in Secondary IDE channel / advanced settings: Device 0 is for master and Device 1 is for slave. On the list box choose 'DMA if available' and reboot. This applies to HDD, too.
Check Current transfer mode again..below the list box.
brad

settings already are "DMA if available" but thanks for the help brad

What about your "Auto-Start" settings? Have you checked to see if they are correct?
Windows Explorer / "Right Click" your CDrom or DVD drive / Properties / Auto-Start
brad