Inspiron 9400 having issues playing DVDs

Question

My Inspiron 9400 (duo core, 1G memory), after over a year of pretty much trouble-free operation, seems to be having trouble playing back DVDs. The sound cuts in and out rapidly and the video motion is jerky. Here's what I've done so far to troubleshoot, but no solutions yet: 1. tried several different discs 2. tried different dvd playback applications 3. checked Windows XP task manager during playback--CPU usage was at 60%, seems maybe a little high? the sound and appearance of the playback does resemble instances where the computer is 'maxxing out' its available resources. There doesn't appear to be any other process consuming significant memory or CPU capactiy 4. am now downloading any recent updates from the Dell support page for my machine. but there is nothing for my DVD player, which is the Sony DW-Q58A. Anybody else out there experiencing this? What might be the cause/solution? Thanks so much!

Skybird · Answer

Check that your drive is in DMA mode and not PIO mode here .......

Start | Control Panel | System in classic view | Hardware tab | Device Manager

Click on the (+) next to IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers. Right-click the channel
the DVD drive is on and select Properties. Click the Advanced Settings tab.

Skybird · Answer

Your DVD drive is Device 0 on the Secondary IDE channel. Where you see
Current Transfer Mode that is set to PIO. just above it is Transfer Mode
and that should set to DMA if available. If it is, then review this article
which includes a quick solution ...................

http://www.michna.com/kb/WxDMA.htm

Ed Geis · Answer

@Skybird wrote:
Check that your drive is in DMA mode and not PIO mode...

Ah, good suggestion. I remember having this issue with a newly installed DVD drive on my desktop system. I checked both IDE channels (not sure which one the DVD drive is using--how can I tell?

Under the "general" tab in "properties" for the DVD drive it lists location as 0 (0) but I'm not sure what that means exactly.

Primary IDE is set to "DMA if available" on both device 0 and device 1. Current transfer mode on device 0 is "Ultra DMA Mode 5." Device 1 says "Not Applicable"

Secondary IDE is also set to "DMA if available" but under "Current Transfer Mode" for Device 0 it says "PIO Mode." Device 1 says "Not Applicable" Is it possible that Device 0 on the Seondary IDE is the DVD drive? If so, How can I change it out of PIO Mode? Thanks

Message Edited by Ed Geis on 06-09-2007 01:37 PM

Ed Geis · Answer

Thanks a lot, that was apparently the problem. If it happens again, I'll know what to do.

Storage, Drives & Media

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