This has been happening a while now. Started noticing Burrrn was acting a bit weird and was failing occasionally with a straightforward cd burn.

Time elapsed/time remaining, and % progress bar were reaching 100% when the cd was only half completed. Sometimes the burn still completed ok, other times it didn't.

Windows Media Player and Real Player will not play an original cd properly. Runs very slowly with crackling sounds all the way through.

However, WinAmp and Foobar play everything fine. Right speed and clear sound. Have tried reinstalling the drivers I'm able to reinstall (factory installed drivers), but that makes no difference. WMP and Real will not have it.

Thought at first it must be the drive, but WinAmp & Foobar working ok seem to make that less likely.

Any ideas? Thanks.

Burrrn went weird on me once and wouldn't burn a disc, in fact it was last month. To fix it I restarted Windows, then installed Burrrn right over the already installed version, then restarted Windows again as a precaution.

I don't know if Burrrn uses this registry key or not "HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Cygnus Solutions\Cygwin" however many freeware or open/source CD burning applications do and if you tried one that modified that key or removed it, it may cause another to fail that relies upon it.

As for fixing Windows Media Player, and Real Player I really have no advice other than perhaps playing around with device settings from within them.

I know Windows Media Player has the option to enable error correction on CD/DVD drives in "Options->Devices" as seen here:

Thanks mate, I'll have a try at anything at the moment. Have rolled back WMP to V10 hoping it might somehow make a difference, and have binned RealPlayer completely.

Sadly WMP 10 plays the same. Slow and crackling. And I've just discovered DivX player is the same with DivX files, and DVD's are the same with WMP and InterVideo WinDVD.

Everything says my drive is goosed, but I can't fathom why cd's play fine in Foobar and WinAmp.

I've had a suggestion from the HP website. Uninstall Secondary IDE channels and restart. May as well give it a try.

Following the HP website advice, went into:-

Start > Right Click My Computer > Properties > Click the Hardware Tab > Device Manager > open IDE ATA/ATAPI Controllers > Right Click Secondary IDE Channel > Uninstall.

The web site didn't say there would be three of them, so I uninstalled them all.

Reboot, back to the same place where the Secondary IDE Channels are all back, and Right Click each one, select Properties > Advanced Settings, and make sure the transfer mode is set at "DMA if available".

Spun a CD, a DVD and a DivX movie, and they all play fine.

So there's a solution guys if your drive starts to play slowly. Provided the "paths" above for anyone who doesn't know where to find this stuff.

I'm sure you'll find this link interesting Dennis as it explains the reasons why some revert to PIO (Programmed Imput Output) mode from the DMA (Direct Memory Access) mode.

A scratched CD or overburning can do it.

Windows xp will turn off DMA mode for a device if for instance 6 timeouts occur during certain data transfers.

This is why I ended up having to uninstall Nero a couple of years ago, as on my system, while burning, timeouts occured and after a while things would screw up, and PIO mode (the slow one ) would result.

http://winhlp.com/?q=node/10

Thanks Hazel, some good info there. Strange thing is, the problem wasn't evident, as I went right through this pc searching out all the drivers etc, and did check that DMA was set in all the relevant places.

The Secondary IDE Channels were still on the DMA setting, and appeared OK.

Mind you, I wouldn't have known that you could just uninstall them, and they would be back after a reboot.

Anyway, I'm a pretty relieved guy at the moment. Pays to not immediately do the obvious, and bin the drive. I'm pleased I use Foobar & WinAmp, otherwise the drive wouldn't have been working with anything, and I may not have persevered looking for a software solution.

Thanks again for the info.

EDIT: I've bookmarked that site Hazel. Forgot to mention that.

Ah that awful PIO mode that XP defaults to after multiple failed reads on bad CD's/DVD's. PIO mode is also a resource hog, and can slow down other things when for instance ripping an audio CD.

Hydrogenaudio also has a guide about Enabling DMA.

Based upon the symptoms I was getting , this was definitely the problem. Slow drive, failed burns, and very high CPU useage. The annoying thing is the Secondary IDE Channels were still displaying DMA mode before I uninstalled them. But lets be honest, if they'd displayed PIO, that would have been too easy.

One important point I forgot to mention after reading Hazels link above, is the possible cause being coming out of Standby Mode.



I've used that a few times over the last couple of weeks.

I won't be using it again.

I didn't know about Standby causing it too.

Was on the HD Tune site and noticed something, HD Tune may have detected your problem Dennis.

I didn't know it could spot that

http://www.hdtune.com/

Go to FAQ's and click on the 'run the benchmark' link

Something that's downright quick to know if DMA or UDMA is enabled without going into Device Manager and clicking all the drives is to download EFD Inspector, it's available right under the HD Tune download!

What it looks like:

Thats a neat little app. Shows a lot of other info as well such as your motherboard, bios, video card etc.

I've got HDTune, and didn't realise that. I didn't know there was an updated version either. Thanks Hazel.




Nice one, got that.