[Cialug] OT: DVD drive problem

[dlg at dsrw.org]

On Mon, Sep 10, 2007 at 03:57:50PM -0500, Tim Wilson wrote:
> 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).
> 
> 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.
> 
> 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.
> 
> Does this sound remotely plausible to anyone?  Would putting a live CD
> distro in and testing with it prove helpful?

Yes.  You should also be able to attempt to force DMA mode from
within Windows.  If this fails (I assume since it is under
warranty it is fairly new, and will therefore support DMA) it is
more data in favor of it being a hardware problem.

"Corrupt codecs" would not explain why the OS made a decision to 
change the hardware from DMA to PIO.  This is not a "codec"
decision.  All codecs do is enable the OS to decode the data
coming off the disk, it would not govern the way or speed at
which the data is read.
  --david



> 
> -- 
> Tim

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