My desktop computer was running extremely slow but it wasn’t like this before. Even formatting didn’t help, so I knew for sure that there was a problem with hardware. I was right on that, DMA mode wasn’t being detected by XP.
For your knowledge, DMA (Direct Memory Access) is a mode supported by modern hard-disks/DVD drives for much faster access times to device. To check if your HDD’s working on DMA mode, follow these steps:
1. Open Device Manager.
2. Expand IDE ATA/ATAPI Controllers to display the list of controllers and channels.
3. Right-click the icon for the channel to which the device is connected, select Properties, and then click the Advanced Settings tab.
4. Check the Current Transfer Mode: If it is in PIO mode, that means that it isn’t working in DMA mode. Try selecting ‘DMA if available’ from Transfer Mode and restart and recheck if the mode changes to DMA. If it doesn’t change, that means either your HDD doesn’t support DMA mode or the registry entries need to be deleted so that Windows XP redetects the mode on startup.
Automatic method for deletion of registry keys:
Download this vbs script:
LinkExecute the script and everything will be done automatically. This is the recommended method.
Source: http://winhlp.com
Manual method for registry keys deletion:
1. Open RegEdit.
2. Navigate to the following KEY:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\{4D36E96A-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}\3. It will have subkeys such as 0000, 0001, 0002, 0003, and so on.
4. Inside each key, delete all entries of the following values:
MasterIdDataChecksum
SlaveIdDataChecksum5. Restart the computer. Windows should now redetect the DMA settings.