Prevent IDE channel from entering the PIO mode?

From time to time my Primary IDE channel keeps reverting back to PIO. Is there any way to force it to stay in DMA?? In both xp and vista?
Answer #1
I think that is achievable via bios.
Answer #2
and how do i do that?
Answer #3
Push DEL key during bootup and find your storage devices, its different with each bios. However usually its the first section on the top left hand side. Click that device and it should say access mode or something.
Answer #4
Microsoft has an error counting safety feature that effects your DMA setting. In otherwords if your optical drive or even hard drive errors five times the OS will drop your dma setting by one. If the errors continue it will keep dropping every five errors until your in PIO mode. There is a fix to get the mode back to DMA but unless to stop the errors it will just come back. In my case it was an optical drive that would error quite often when I was erasing disks that cause the DMA to be lost, and removing the drive and replacing with another fixed it, and the drive I removed worked fine in another PC. Sometimes swapping drives if you have two opticals, making the slave a master and master the slave, will stop the errors. You have to follow some rules though, the slave jumpered drive should always be connected to the middle of the ribbon and the master jumpered drive to the terminating end.
To get back your DMA mode you can try uninstalling the ide controller and then reinstalling but if that doesn’t do it there is a registry way:
Following is the mechanism that has worked for me, please try it at your own risk, it involves hacking the registry: 1. Open RegEdit 2. Find the following KEY: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\ Class\{4D36E96A-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}\000x 3.The last four digits will be 0000, 0001, 0002, 0003, and so on. 4.Under each key, delete all occurences of the following values:      MasterIdDataChecksum      SlaveIdDataChecksum 5. Reboot the computer. Windows will now redetect DMA settings.  I tried the "un-install IDE channel" trick several times... no joy. Primary IDE was in PIO and would not reset to DMA. Used the registry tweak and BAM... DMA all around! Remember, you have to eliminate the source of the errors or it will come back to haunt you again.
In the case of the primary channel going bad because of the hard drive and not an optical drive you can replace the drive but first check some things like jumpers, are they correct and follow the above rules? Also you can run chkdsk on the drive to check for and repair system errors (a reboot is necessary for the C drive) right click the drive select properties and then Tools and do the error checking routine. You can run scannow to try and fix system file errors but its a real pain. You have to put your OS disk in the drive and repeatedly hit the retry button over and over until it can finish and I mean its a real pain to do it open your run box and type in SFC /SCANNOW. Sometimes I think a complete reinstall would be easier but I would lose all my programs.
Answer #5
oh ok its a bit complicated but I’ll try it out wish there was a way to stop the OS completely from resetting the thing back to PIO