I know a question about Windows make most people on the list shudder, but I think someone at Best Buy is blowing smoke (or has inhaled too deeply).<br><br>My wife's laptop started experiencing issues a little over a week ago, with one of the auto-launch programs saying that a device was not using DMA mode. So I went to the disk controller in Device Manager, and sure enough, it was set to use DMA mode if available, but it was using PIO mode. We also noticed that the drive was making noises, and the laptop was quite sluggish when anything was using the DVD drive. Since it is under warranty, I took it in to Best Buy, and the "tech" at Geek Squad said it wasn't a failing drive, it was corrupted codecs. He played an audio CD, and it skipped and hesitated. So his argument was that it had to be a codec, because even in PIO mode, the CD should be fine.
<br><br>I'll admit, that test was pretty convincing, but it still doesn't explain the sluggishness of the laptop while the DVD is in use. That to me sounds like a PIO mode issue.<br><br>Does this sound remotely plausible to anyone? Would putting a live CD distro in and testing with it prove helpful?
<br clear="all"><br>-- <br>Tim