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Acer 8100 ultra slow, no DMA on hard drive

post #1 of 13
5/5/05 at 3:59pm
Thread Starter 
I noticed that my Acer TM8104 has been running extremely slow since I re-installed Windows XP Pro SP2 with all the drivers (I can't tell for sure how it was with the pre-install XP Pro, but it did feel much faster).

I checked in the device manager, under IDE ATA/ATAPI Controllers, Primary Channel properties (where the hard drive is connected), Advanced Settings's tab. It says "Current Transfer Mode: PIO Mode". However, PIO Mode is the old pre-DMA method which is very slow.

I compared the the settings for the Secondary Controller (where the DVD-RW is connected) and it says the mode is "Ultra DMA Mode 2", which is OK, but the hard drive should also be using DMA.

Simple things like copying a 200mb file totally kill the CPU 100% for about a minute, when on my old P3 667 Thinkpad (which has DMA on the HD) It copies the file in 3-4 seconds without any noticeable CPU usage.

Another test I did was with UT2004, even with all the settings for graphics and etc set to Lowest, when I enter a level, it stays on the "loading" screen for a good 5+ minutes before actually entering the level. Once loaded tho, the game runs fine.


Any one noticed problems like this or has any idea on how to fix this ?

Thanks
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post #2 of 13
5/9/05 at 4:36am
Thread Starter 
I spoke too another TM8100 user who reinstalled Windows XP (He has an 8103) and his hard drive is also set to PIO only.


Can anyone just check in their Windows 2000/XP Device Manager to see if you have DMA or PIO in the properties for your Primary Channel properties ?

I'd be very greatfull,

Thanks,

Alex
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post #3 of 13
5/9/05 at 7:32am
On my 8103 running stock WinXP Pro it says:
Device 0:
Device Type: Auto detection (greyed out)
Transfer Mode: DMA if available
Current Transfer Mode: Ultra DMA Mode 5

Hope that helps
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post #4 of 13
5/9/05 at 7:38am
Thread Starter 
Hmmmm ok, I will try reloading the recovery version of Windows to see if that will work.

I already tried re-installing the Intel drivers both the version from the Acer CD and newer from Intel's website but in all cases I was still stuck with PIO mode only.

I was told that perhaps I needed to put "a driver disk" during the Windows XP install when it says at the beginning "Press F6 to install additional disk controller device" so it sees it properly as an ICH6 UDMA controller.

Alex
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post #5 of 13
5/9/05 at 4:23pm
Have you also installed the Intel chipset drivers?
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post #6 of 13
5/9/05 at 5:15pm
Thread Starter 
Yes, both the original ones from the Acer driver disc (v1001) and the new ones from Intel's site (v1019).

The correct adapter is detected, and I also forced installation of the drivers by doing update driver, select driver from location, etc and even manually chose the drivers, but it still didn't enable DMA
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post #7 of 13
5/9/05 at 5:38pm
Thread Starter 
Here is a screenshot of the relevant devices... Could someone with DMA on his TM8100 HD post a similar screenshot ? Thanks


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post #8 of 13
5/10/05 at 2:02pm
Mine looks exactly the same except: I have Infrared Devices and because I am in a docking station under System Services an entry for Docking Station and one for PCI standard PCI-to-PCI bridge.

Wait, I do NOT have the PnP BIOS Extension.
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post #9 of 13
5/12/05 at 10:59am
Thread Starter 
I had to wait a few days until I didn't need my laptop for work... I finally figured out how to fix this problem.

Even though the system always had the drivers installed, it didn't use UDMA on the hard drive, even tho it had the updated drivers. All I had to do was to select the Ultra ATA Controller in Device Manager, delete it, then Windows XP asks to reboot, does so, installs new devices, asks to reboot, then you can use the system.

Everything runs great now =D
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post #10 of 13
5/13/05 at 1:07pm
xanderCDN, what kind of improved performance did you experience? HOw was it different from back then when you had it installed?
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post #11 of 13
5/13/05 at 4:12pm
Thread Starter 
Hum, I'd say like comparing a 486 to a Pentium 4... Since I did not have DMA activated on the hard drive, each file I/O had to go through the CPU instead of directly to the RAM, meaning copying a file was slow and would take 100% CPU usage, starting programs was slow, like FireFox would take ~10-15 seconds at least to start.

Now programs start much faster and even copying large files doesn't take 100% CPU usage.

Do you suspect you might have DMA disabled ? Look at my screenshot I posted above, then in your Device Manager, right click on Primary IDE Channel, Properties. Then go to the second tab (Advanced something...) and it should say "Current Transfer Mode: Ultra DMA 5" if you have DMA activated, if not it will say "Current Transfer Mode: PIO".
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post #12 of 13
5/13/05 at 9:27pm
Hi there,
I have a problem with my new Acer 8103. When I download short videos(mostly less that 2 min) I get this garbled blurry image on my media player and I don't know how to get it fixed. Could someone help me out with this?

Thank You
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post #13 of 13
5/13/05 at 11:28pm
Thread Starter 
As I had originally feared by delaying the fixing of my DMA problem, trying to upgrade the other components of the system with the latest driver did not go as smoothly, upon rebooting, Windows went berzerk with with STOP screens and kept rebooting and eventually the filesystem got damaged (lost inodes/orphaned files, etc).

So I downloaded the latest Windows XP Pro SP2 from Microsoft and re-installed, going right away with the latest Intel drivers for the chipset as well as the latest Realtek drivers for the soundcard (the soundcard was causing majoir problems too), everything seems perfect and much faster. I suspect even tho I had maned to get my HD to work with DMA before, not all of the chipset was using the latest Intel driver.
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