Hey. my drive is chaotic. sometimes I put a movie in and it crashes. sometimes I go to burn something and it crashes, sometimes it crashes in a reading phase of copying, sometimes it crashes in the writing stage. but always at the start of something. it makes a noise of starting to do something then Phwwwoooo screens black and I have to reboot, the sound and sight of my computer dieing is just too painful ... any help?

Can you tell us what drive you have?  Provide as much information about your rig if you can... Hardware and software installed?  Is DMA enabled on your drive?  Have you tried a no 80-conductor IDE cable (assuming IDE here)...  Is their more than one IDE drive in your rig... is this drive the master or slave (again, assuming IDE)...

Welcome to the forum... we'll try to help...

(in reply to hlywkar)

XP Home edition, 02, SP2, pretty sure all updates,
AMD Athlon 64
3500+
2.21 Ghz, 1 Gig ram.
Nvidia gefore 7300 GS
Creative SB audigy 2
drive : HL-DT-ST DVDRAM GSA-4167B... I can't really tell from the front what it is... just says LG.

software... lots. lol. for burning... nero, anydvd, dvdshrink, dvddecrypter,DVDFab Decrypter...usually anydvd and dvdshrink... play back, windows media player, but I don't often play back on my comp. just to test a video maybe.
Where do I check DMA enabled?? i checked the properties but I couldn't find it.
no 80 IDE cable?... It's an IDE cable I know that, the cord that's about 2 inches thick or so in the back?... only one IDE dvd drive...master. 1 IDE hard drive and one of the new thinner yellow ones for my other hard drive, about half an inch, maybe larger... don't know the name of those.

(in reply to SithTracy)

80-conductor cable is IDE, but it has 80 wires going to the 40-pin connector... Are they flat cables or round?

Have you checked for a firmware update for your drive?  It may solve some of your issues.

Do you have Nero's InCD installed???  If so, do yourself a huge favor and remove it.  It's garbage and causes nothing but problems!!!

To check to see if DMA is enabled, you need to check the IDE channels in the windows device manager... Right-click on "My Computer" and select "Manage"... Select the "Device Manager"... Your IDE controllers are there.

(in reply to hlywkar)

Nero 7 Premium is listed in my programs installed. no Nero InCd. and I looked in all the subfolders in the start/programs/nero 7 Premium list and nothing was there saying Nero InCD either.

Under the computer management, IDE ATA/ATAPI  Controllers:
I find three items:
NVIDIA nForce4 Paralell ATA Controller
NVIDIA nForce4 Serial ATA Controller
NVIDIA nForce4 Serial ATA Controller

for the first one it list my hard drive on the primary channel,
and my dvd drive on my secondary channel.
the second one primary is my other hard drive
this is all greek to me so stick with me :)
back to the first one... I don't get the option to see the screen you posted up.
I see the subfolders of General, Primary Channel, Secondary Channel, Driver, Details, and resources.
under Secondary Channel:
it lists my Master drive as my dvd drive : "HL-DT-ST DVDRAM GSA-4167B"
and nothing on the slave...
the tricky thing here is... every thing is grey except the "let BIOS select transfer mode" option... and it says that "Ultra DMA 2 - Ultra33" is selected.
to change it, I can unselect the Bios selects it mode... then it gives me a list..
what do I change it to? assuming this is what I am looking for.
it has the options of
Ultra DMA 2 - Ultra33
Ultra DMA 1
Ultra DMA 0
Multi-word DMA 2
Multi-word DMA 1
Multi-word DMA 0
PIO mode

also there is a blue check mark beside the Ultra DMA 2 - Ultra33 selection...

K. so that's what I got. what should it be on?

I am pretty sure my ide cable is flat... it's not grey with a red strip down the side... it's black.with a white strip down the side... I just looked at an old computer and it was grey with red, and it looked like it had way less wires going in it than this one. also the othet the individual ribs, or what ever, where the wires went through, looked fatter... I will assum those are the round vs flat you are talking about... if that is the case, then I think mines flat.... if I pulled the sucker out and looked at it, would there be something specific like pin count or nob at the top too look for? or is that enough info?

I'll try to look into the firmware as soon as possible. but I haven't yet... pretty sure it's up to date.

(in reply to SithTracy)

Roll back to the Microsoft PATA drivers for your IDE channel and you will be in good shape.  I have an nForce4 SLI chipset and only use the nVidia drivers on my SATA controller; not the PATA controller.

(in reply to hlywkar)

hey man. I went to the driver and tried to roll it back but it said there wasn't any previous driver backed up that it could roll back to... can I just download one? or get it off my microsoft xp cd?

(in reply to SithTracy)

I even tried removing the driver completely and reboot... still tries to go to the nvidia driver... course now it wants a copy of it... and I have to either get that new pata, if you know where I can get it.... or dig into all my system disks and pray I can find the right disk. :)

(in reply to SithTracy)

You may have to un-install the nVidia IDE drivers through Add/Remove... You don't need to remove them all, I am quite sure their is an option to remove the nVidia IDE drivers.  You should see the nVidia Drivers in add/remove.

(in reply to hlywkar)

K did that... now I get messed up results... it knocked out all of the previous three instead of the 1, in the computer management.. ok cool. I can understand that. but when it loaded up what microsoft had to offer, I have three of three differnt things
3 listings of : Primary IDE Channel
3 listings of: Secondary IDE Channel
3 listings of: Standard Dual Channel PCI IDE Controller.

I had 3 now I have 9?... little odd. sould I remove them all and let windows recognize again? also I open them up, and it doesn't list the hardware attached...
it does list dma options... which leads me to think that two are under primary IDE channels, and one under secondary.

for the first one, under advanced settings
device 0. 'DMA if availaible' is set to Ultra DMA Mode 5
device 1. not applicable. gonna assume nothings here
second "primary IDE channel"
device 0 'DMA if available' is set to Ultra DMA Mode 6
device 1 set to not applicable. again assume nothigns here.
third listing of P. IDE channel
both not applicable. nothing here.

secondary
the first one under advanceced settings device 0
lists the dma if availble set to ultra DMA mode 2

which I think was what the DVD drive was set to before.
do I change this to the PIO only then?
- should I sort out the fact that I lost the other two nvidia listings?
or that I have nine new ones? lol
any ways, thanks for all the help man

(in reply to SithTracy)

Remove 'em... Let windows re-detect.

(in reply to hlywkar)