cd drive performance

[jonc2006]

im having alot of difficulty getting dvd movies to work on this laptop. i used to be able to play them without any problems at all but now for some reason every dvd i put in my drive, the audio is choppy and so is the picture. at first i thought i was one of my disks that were scratched of something but every dvd ive tried, including ones that worked previously are having this problem as well, also because if i was to play them on a drive not on my computer, my playstation for instance, they work fine on there too. my dvd/cd drive can read game cds, music cds, etc. just fine but when it comes to a dvd it just gets real crappy performance.

ive tried both intervideo dvd and windows media player to see if the problem stems from one of those but it doesnt. in fact, playing it onthe windows media player is kinda strange, as it will be in slow motion at first, but if i let it play a while and then reset the dvd, the dvd will play fine up to the point of where i stopped it. im not sure what kind of info on my pc you would need to help me with this but ill gladly post it if anyone tells me. ive got about 1.24 gb out of 80gb on this pc, could a low amount of disk space have anything to do with this?

[shafeen]

well i think u should try a cd/dvd lens cleaner

also i think that the lens would have been damaged due to moisture in the drive clean the drive with a cloth and then try cd/dvd lens cleaner i should say

[thc]

You're able to play DVDs in CD drive. WOW
I've seen this kind of thing when IDE is switched to PIO instead of UDMA
System Properties->Device Manager->(something like)IDE ATA/ATAPI
and see if primary/secondary channel is "UDMA if available"
Happens sometimes after instaling some SCSI drivers (Daemon tools for example)

[jonc2006]

Originally Posted by thc

You're able to play DVDs in CD drive. WOW
I've seen this kind of thing when IDE is switched to PIO instead of UDMA
System Properties->Device Manager->(something like)IDE ATA/ATAPI
and see if primary/secondary channel is "UDMA if available"
Happens sometimes after instaling some SCSI drivers (Daemon tools for example)

bah! you know what i ment! and i just so happened to have installled daemon tools a while back, so that could be my problem. under primary i have two transferrer mode options under each device (0&1) they are, DMA if avalible or PIO only. as of now they are both set to DMA if avalible. device 0's current transferrer mode is ultra DMA mode 5
and device 1's is "not applicable".

Secondary IDE, both devices have the dma if avalible option and PIO mode only optiion.
device 0 is set to dma if avalible but the current transfer mode is PIO.
device 1 is set to dma if available and the current setting is "not applicable"

i dont know if "UDMA" like you said is the same as "DMA" like im seeing but if what i hope what i listed gives you a better idea of what im looking at. would exiting out of daemon tools stop this or would i need to uninstall daemon tools altogether?

[thc]

There is no exact way I found yet how to force it back to UDMA (this happened to me on multiple PCs)
mostly I just fiddle with things.....
- uninstalling daemon tools may help. also may not as this is windows issue not deamon tools one.
- select UDMA mode for drive in BIOS. (as You have lappy this may not be available at all)
- is Your drive removable ? remove it, boot, shutdown, insert it, boot.
- update drive firmware. this'll force windows to find it as new drive
- remove driver [update I mean IDE channel driver (that one which is affected)], reboot and let it find again
- install manufacturer driver if available (also IDE channel driver)

however also note that windows forcing PIO may be symptom of Your drive/cable/controller going bad (they will complain about errors during DMA transfers in eventlog if that's the case)

[jonc2006]

Originally Posted by thc

There is no exact way I found yet how to force it back to UDMA (this happened to me on multiple PCs)
mostly I just fiddle with things.....
- uninstalling daemon tools may help. also may not as this is windows issue not deamon tools one.
- select UDMA mode for drive in BIOS. (as You have lappy this may not be available at all)
- is Your drive removable ? remove it, boot, shutdown, insert it, boot.
- update drive firmware. this'll force windows to find it as new drive
- remove driver [update I mean IDE channel driver (that one which is affected)], reboot and let it find again
- install manufacturer driver if available (also IDE channel driver)

however also note that windows forcing PIO may be symptom of Your drive/cable/controller going bad (they will complain about errors during DMA transfers in eventlog if that's the case)

can you explain in more detail on how to do the last 3 things you mentioned? as those seem to be the only ones i can try.

[thc]

1) Download and flash firmware
Go to site of manufacturer of Your notebook and look there for drivers/firmware updates, download and run. If it's not there....
You need to know what drive You have. System Properties->Device manager->CD DVD Drives (or something like that) and there it will be visible.
There You'll need some common sense and take some part of that string.
for example I have HL-DT-ST DVDRRW GSA-4166B so i take GSA-4166.
google for "insert Your part of string here" firmware.
hmm, maybe better tell what drive You have / lappy model I'll look for dl link.

2) System properties->Device manager->IDE ATA/ATAPI->Secondary IDE->Driver->Uninstall (Windows will "hopefully" find it after restart and reinstall that driver)

3) download and install manufacturer driver for IDE if one exists. it may be bundled in motherboard or something like this.
sometimes forcing them via "Actualize Driver" is required. You may try built-in actualization from windows update it may work for lappy.

[jonc2006]

Originally Posted by thc

1) Download and flash firmware
Go to site of manufacturer of Your notebook and look there for drivers/firmware updates, download and run. If it's not there....
You need to know what drive You have. System Properties->Device manager->CD DVD Drives (or something like that) and there it will be visible.
There You'll need some common sense and take some part of that string.
for example I have HL-DT-ST DVDRRW GSA-4166B so i take GSA-4166.
google for "insert Your part of string here" firmware.
hmm, maybe better tell what drive You have / lappy model I'll look for dl link.

2) System properties->Device manager->IDE ATA/ATAPI->Secondary IDE->Driver->Uninstall (Windows will "hopefully" find it after restart and reinstall that driver)

3) download and install manufacturer driver for IDE if one exists. it may be bundled in motherboard or something like this.
sometimes forcing them via "Actualize Driver" is required. You may try built-in actualization from windows update it may work for lappy.

i have a hp pavillion zv6001 laptop. the cd drive that is on the side of it has a DVD ROM logo, im not sure if that tells you what you need to know but if you need more tell me. im certain this isnt some sort of compatiblity issue where my laptop cant play dvd's, as i used to watch them all the time on here. but now that i think about it, the last time i remember getting a clear video and audio performance while watching a dvd on this pc was before i installed daemon tools, so my guess would be something to do with that. btw thanks for your time.

[a_en]

here's my solution

just remove any IDE driver's there. if it's ask for restart just choose exit without restart and continue deleting, then reboot. it's will reinstalled automatically, just prepare mb driver just in case something goes wrong. and my mb is intel p5ld2 so it's have sata/uata controllers, another chipset dont have this..

[jonc2006]

Originally Posted by a_en

here's my solution

just remove any IDE driver's there. if it's ask for restart just choose exit without restart and continue deleting, then reboot. it's will reinstalled automatically, just prepare mb driver just in case something goes wrong. and my mb is intel p5ld2 so it's have sata/uata controllers, another chipset dont have this..

but wait, all im seeing under the IDE ATA/ATPAI controllers menu is this:

Primary IDE Channel
Secondary IDE Channel
Standard Dual Channel PCI IDE Controller

you want me to uninstall all of them? dumb question but wouldnt that remove them completely and require me to re install them myself? what if im not sure i have what i need to re install them, like hardware cd installers or whatnot? what do you mean by that last part with the mb driver thing, what is that? i dont want to remove something and screw myself over in the long run, are you sure this is safe to do and wont cause any other programs and such to not work or function right?

[thc]

Isn't that allready beed said ?...
Also removing all of them when You have boot disk connected to IDE is not very good idea.

2) System properties->Device manager->IDE ATA/ATAPI->Secondary IDE->Driver->Uninstall (Windows will "hopefully" find it after restart and reinstall that driver)

I was saying firmware on first place coz it's easier for most ppl. and has allmost same success rate.
firmware download

[refraction]

you havent got any Starforce protected games on there have you? it is number 1 cause of drives returning to PIO mode

this should be your solution

IDE ATA and ATAPI disks use PIO mode after multiple time-out or CRC errors occur

[jonc2006]

Originally Posted by refraction

you havent got any Starforce protected games on there have you? it is number 1 cause of drives returning to PIO mode

this should be your solution

IDE ATA and ATAPI disks use PIO mode after multiple time-out or CRC errors occur

nah ive never even heard of starforce, what are some examples of starforce protected games? aside from my emulation stuff i have a bunch of pc games like silent hill 2 &3, myst 1-4, duke nukem and all those classic fps games (im not into the more recent stuff), diablo 1 &2.

edit- alright i got it working again thanks everyone. one thing though, assuming this was caused when i installed daemon tools, what does daemon tools do specificly that triggers this problem? im just curious if its possible im going to run into this problem if i keep using daemon tools. right now i have no vitual drives up and no images mounted but if i was to start using daemon tools would this happen again or was this a one-time thing? because i do like the luxury of not needing to have cds on me all the time considering im using a laptop.

[thc]

Instalation of first SCSI driver on windows AFAIK.