Fab Express Slowdown

rogman49 2006-05-01 07:49:50 UTC #1

Hello Everyone,

I have a problem, but it might be related to my dvd burner. My pc is about 2 months old, os in winxp. Fab express was running fast until last week. I finished a dvd and inserted another. I did not power down machine or reboot. Express started running very slow. I cancelled and tried to playback dvd. Picture and sound were very jerky (word?). I can get express to work, but it is very slow. To compress and copy movie takes about 3-4 times longer then it used to. I added no new software or hardware. I noticed the fab log states dma is off, but it is on. I have been working with hp, but nothing works. Does anyone think the drive might be bad?

geno888 2006-05-01 07:53:01 UTC #2

DMA must be on. Verify it correctly.
http://club.cdfreaks.com/showthread.php?t=101616

Check also in bios: some mainboards require DMA must be activated also here.

What IDE drivers do you have installed? Many people complain that nvidia or intel IDE drivers give problems, so maybe you could try to revert to standard microsoft ones.

wraithdu 2006-05-01 08:32:43 UTC #3

I'm thinking this is the Windows "bug" where if there are enough read errors it will slow down the drive to PIO mode. Problem is that it doesn't tell you!!

I'm not sure if this is the correct way to fix this, but I would disable DMA for all your IDE channels (see link above). Then reboot. Then re-enable DMA for all channels and reboot again.

Another option is to install AnyDVD (sorry for the advertisement in this forum). Aside from removing copy protection, this program is a low level cdrom driver that, in addition to the bug described here, fixes other Windows cdrom quirks as well, such as the name of a CD/DVD not being displayed in Explorer when you insert a new disc in the drive.

rogman49 2006-05-01 09:11:21 UTC #4

Thanks for the quick response. When I change to PIO option the whole machine runs very slow. It took 15 mins to reboot. I thought machine was hung. I changed per instructions from HP. I changed back to dma. I also deleted registry entries per HP. Nothing works

geno888 2006-05-01 09:17:55 UTC #5

What IDE drivers do you have?

bigmacnc 2006-05-01 09:30:58 UTC #6

Once I accidentally loaded two copies of express which slowed it down to almost a stop at times. Also reverted to standard windows ide driver.

Mack

rogman49 2006-05-01 10:13:31 UTC #7

Hi Mac,

Not sure about what IDE drivers I have. I think HP is willing to send out a new drive, but I don't think it is hardware. What can I do to load standard drivers? The drive was ok for the 1st 2 months. Having 2 express apps running at the same time is not the problem.

HUN 2006-05-01 11:02:47 UTC #8

Your problem is not related to Fab (if DVD playback is also jerky). If the computer has not slowed down altogether I would try a system restoration to an earlier time. Should something happened to your drivers this would have to restore it.

rogman49 2006-05-01 11:27:29 UTC #9

Thanks for the reply HUN. I agree 100%. Not Fab problem. Just thought I would ask the question and see if somebody had similar experience. I have been working with HP, nut no answers yet. I can't understand how on 1 dvd its OK, the next is slow. No reboots or anything. If I had shutdown the pc and it happened at next power up it would not seem so strange.

geno888 2006-05-01 12:34:28 UTC #10

Check here. To see what IDE drivers are installed you can follow the same method, but clicking on "driver" tab instead of "advanced"

http://club.cdfreaks.com/showthread.php?t=101616

maineman 2006-05-01 14:08:50 UTC #11

Sounds like you're on the way to a fix...hopefully anyway.

BTW, if needed, here is the ms "fix" for the windows bug mentioned by wraithdu...

"After the Windows IDE/ATAPI Port driver (Atapi.sys) receives a cumulative total of six time-out or cyclical redundancy check (CRC) errors, the driver reduces the communications speed (the transfer mode) from the highest Direct Memory Access (DMA) mode to lower DMA modes in steps. If the driver continues to receive time-out or CRC errors, the driver eventually reduces the transfer mode to the slowest mode (PIO mode)."

rogman49 2006-05-02 06:31:57 UTC #12

Hi Everyone,

I took HUN's advice and did a system restore. It worked!! Express is running normally. Before I did restore I checked device manager and it showed dma as being on. Still don't know what happened. This kind of thing makes me nervous. Thanks again for the help.