About Roy Bonner Expertise Motherboard/cpu, disk drives, sound card, graphics card and modem setup, also software setup win95,98,98SE,Me,NT3.5, NT4, XP & win2000, Lotus, MS Office 95, 97, 2000 & 2003.
Experience
Hi, I have been doing this spot here for some years now, and I like to think that I have helped a few people here and there, but due to advancing years and failing health, I'm afraid that I have decided that I can no longer carry on since I can no longer guarantee to be able to answer questions in a reasonable timescale. I should like to thank all the other experts and the users of this site for what has been an enjoyable and enlightening experience. I shall be terminating next Sunday 12th November 2006.
Expert: Roy Bonner Date: 10/23/2006 Subject: CD/DVD rom issues
Question Well, I did all that and the problem isn't gone. I was at 85% free before I did the defrag so it really didn't take that long. But the drives are both still not running correctly. This wasn't a gradual thing either. One day it worked fine, next day it was freezing things up, sound was horrible, and it knocked me offline. BTW, what is DMA?
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Well I got the computer less than a year ago. It is a compaq with media center. 250 GB hard drive, 1 GB memory, 3500+ AMD athlon 64 processor. I did talk to the people at Circuit City and they gave me the info to contact Compaq since it is still under warranty. But if I can avoid that hassle I would prefer it. It almost acts like interverence (sp?). But I can't for the life of me figure out what I changed on the computer since the last time it worked. I tried to burn a cd today and it burned at 4.2x instead of the usual 40x. It also takes longer to rip cds, but they do turn out just fine. It is frusterating!! haha
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My computer has started giving me playback trouble. The CD-Rom and the DVD-Rom drives have both started making this "skipping" sound. When this happens it kicks me off the internet. I don't get the connection there but it happens every time. Sometimes I can get through the previews of a DVD without problems, sometimes it begins immediatly. Any ideas?
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Hi Rachel,
It sounds very much like your system is running low on resources. Can you get back to me with some more information about your system, how much RAM you have, size of hard drive, amount of free space, how many programs etc., are being loaded at start-up. What speed of processor do you have, is DMA turned on for all your drives including the CD & DVD drives? Do you regularly defrag your drive(s)? Do you maintain your system with a program such as Advanced Windows Care or CCleaner?
The more information you can give me, the more likely I will be able to help you.
Regards
Roy
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Hi Rachel,
Well, you just confirmed what I suspected pretty much. First, I doubt you have ever defragged your hard drive have you? You will find the disk defragmenter in Start/All Programs/Accessories/System Tools. This needs to be run at least once a week to keep your system working properly, if as I suspect you haven't run it lately, it may take a considerable time to run! (Go have dinner, watch a movie, have some tea then check to see if it's somewhere near done!). Download and install CCleaner, (http://www.ccleaner.com), run it to remove junk files, then registry errors. After that go to tools/startup and check out what programs etc. are being loaded at startup, you will probably find that many of them do not need to be run, and you should turn them off with this tool if they are not really required. Having done all that, re-run Defrag, it shouldn't take so long this time. Your system should now be a lot faster than it was, and the CD writing problems should also have gone.
Regards
Roy
Answer Hi Rachel,
First, DMA (Direct Memory Access), is a method of reading and writing a disk drive without using processor time, unlike the older PIO (Programmed Input / Output), where the system cpu had to do all the work. That means that the cpu has only half the amount of work to do, therefore programs work much faster and better. If for any reason one or more of your drives should be running in PIO mode instead of DMA, it would be the computer equivalent of hitching a large, heavy trailer to the back your car. You can check this state by going into the Device Manager, selecting the IDE channels one at a time and checking their properties, it will show the current operating mode of your drives.
If however you have tried everything else without effect, it may well be a software problem, and a repair install of windows may be the only thing which will cure the problem.
Being a Compaq machine, I assume you have restore disks rather than proper install disks. Before accepting systems for warranty repairs, Compaq usually require you to have tried a complete restore of the software first because in all honesty, probably 90% of computer problems are basically software problems, therefore you really have little to lose, since a full restore is next thing to do before contacting Compaq.
