HELP! CD & DVD Drives slow down my system!

[FunkyMan3333]

Hi guys... I need some help - haven't been able to fix this.

Whenever I'm using my CD or DVD drive (either reading or writing), everything on the computer slows down. It's particularly noticeable when I'm in iTunes or Windows Media Player - the audio becomes choppy and slow and the video lags. It means I can't listen to audio when I'm burning something...

This is a relatively new problem - it wasn't doing this about a month ago. I think what changed was that I installed Nero 7 (although I'm not sure). I've gone back to Nero 6.6, but it still does it with no improvement.

Thanks in advance!

FunkyMan

COMPUTER SPECS:
CHIP:
3.00 gigahertz Intel Pentium 4
16 kilobyte primary memory cache
1024 kilobyte secondary memory cache
DRIVES:
320.07 Gigabytes Usable Hard Drive Capacity
174.32 Gigabytes Hard Drive Free Space
ATAPI CDRW 52X32 [CD-ROM drive]
HL-DT-ST DVDRAM GSA-4120B [CD-ROM drive]
3.5" format removeable media [Floppy drive]
MOTHERBOARD:
Board: Intel Corporation D865GBF AAC28140-405
Bus Clock: 200 megahertz
MEMORY:
1024 Megabytes Installed Memory
Slot 'J6G1' has 512 MB
Slot 'J6G2' has 512 MB
Slot 'J6H1' is Empty
Slot 'J6H2' is Empty
HDD:
c: (NTFS on drive 0) 80.02 GB 50.39 GB free
d: (NTFS on drive 0) 80.02 GB 69.60 GB free
e: (NTFS on drive 1) 160.04 GB 54.33 GB free
DISPLAY:
NVIDIA GeForce FX 5500 [Display adapter]
Samsung SyncMaster [Monitor] (17.1"vis, s/n HCJX729401, July 2004)
SOUND:
SoundMAX Integrated Digital Audio

 

[shevanel]

Hey i had this problem too with my older machine. im not too sure why it happened but i think it may be because the cd i had wasnt supported by my optical drive.
I never solved the problem i just used a new disc and it worked fine so maybe try that. I even tried this disc on my new pc and it couldnt read it, which is weird cause it was a fairly new disc.
So my advice is try a different disc it may work this way
Hope that helped somewhat

 

[trekker9876]

hi it sounds like you it may be your ram or... how often do you defrag your system? check also to make sure your swap file is large enough

 

[FunkyMan3333]

Thanks for your attempts so far, guys!
Two answers to your suggestions:

A) It's definitely not the media. This happens with BOTH my drives - my CD-writer (a generic) and my DVD-writer (an LG), and I've used multiple different media types.

B) I'm not sure why it would be my RAM - I have 1 Gig, and I have no problems with it with any other program (including RAM-heavy stuff like video editing). I defrag my two partitions C: and D: weekly using Executive Software and my E: drive (which is my large data drive), I defrag once every 2-3 weeks...

Thanks!

 

[curtis]

Hi, I will post this in your other thread as you have listed this in two sections.

Open Device Manager on your PC.

Uninstall your two IDE channels located under IDE controllers.

Reboot, let windows re install the IDE controllers and all should be good.

Dont go installing them damn intel chipset drivers again :lol:

Let us know if it works for ya?

 

[FunkyMan3333]

Curtis -

THANK YOU THANK YOU!

It worked perfectly! I can't believe it was that simple!

The reason I installed the new Intel drivers was because my computer kept crashing on SP2 until I upgraded my motherboard drivers. Obviously that cause other problems.

Anyway, works perfectly now. Thanks!

 

[isam]

well by now, i can say i tried everythin to fix this problem, but not luck, i sent it to the place i bought the rig from, they checked the ram, the drive, the harddrives, andd said eerythin was fine and didnt know what tro do, i tried sovlin it your way with the uninstaling, nothing happened, i bought a new drive, still problem persisted, i FORMATTED, and yet it stays! :s im really out of ideas if anyone could help! thanks a lot guys

 

[g-paw]

well by now, i can say i tried everythin to fix this problem, but not luck, i sent it to the place i bought the rig from, they checked the ram, the drive, the harddrives, andd said eerythin was fine and didnt know what tro do, i tried sovlin it your way with the uninstaling, nothing happened, i bought a new drive, still problem persisted, i FORMATTED, and yet it stays! :s im really out of ideas if anyone could help! thanks a lot guys

If it's an older machine like the OP posted, could be old age, i.e., any number of things, e.g., PSU, hdd, RAM

 

[isam]

its a fairly nwe machine, less than a year old, E6600 CPU, asus MB, 7950GS MSI, 2GB SanDisk RAM,

anyway, i know it could be anythin, but could anyone just throw a wild "smart" guess for me so ill knw where to go next???

thnx

 

[aevm]

Here's a possible cause: you try to read a scratched or dirty DVD, the drive gets lots of errors, Windows switches it to PIO mode, the disk drive becomes slower, the CPU is now busy doing optical disk reads.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/817472

 

[The_OGS]

If you have multiple optical drives and harddisks, it is important to have them connected for high-performance operation.
This doesn't start in Device Manager (although we want to see UDMA4 or at least UDMA2 connection).
It begins with the controller assignment, ie. putting your harddisk and burner on separate controllers!
This is somewhat easier to do these days, with SATA controllers... but the more 'traditional' rig with 2 controllers for 4 IDE devices, it is very important.
Make sure your burner is not slaved to your harddisk, on the same controller! And if your HD is on the primary controller, with 2 burners on the secondary controller, make sure they play nice together.
Typically, your newest burner ie. DVD burner will be Master on the secondary controller. Having an older burner or CD slaved to the new burner is pretty useless (and probably because you have lost the little blank plastic panel, right? Heheh...)
Most burners, when using top-quality cabling, will run @ UDMA4 (66MB/s) and then, with your harddisk on the other controller, you're good.
So FunkyMan seems to be sorted...? But this is still very good basic advice for all.
And re: Intel controller drivers - yes, IDE drivers can be scary and I have had whole rigs collapse from the use of Application Accelerator type drivers.
Basically, IDE modes haven't changed since the 90's so, WinXP drivers are fine! If you see UDMA4 (or even UDMA2, with older burners) you're in business
Note: Windows keeps track of DVD performance, and may 'downgrade' the controller if errors are encountered. Top-quality 80-pin ribbon cable should be used! Or round cable, even better.
This is why throwing-out the controller (from Device Manager) and then rebooting, can fix people up!
But master/slaving on cheap cabling will therefore have no future, y'know? So get a good cable and tune that up,
Regards

 

[isam]

to be honest, i dunno wat exactly are u talkin about, :S hehe i tried googlin the udma stuff but came out with nth, but in reply to what i understood, i have my harddrives connected on 2 separate sata cables, and a single optical drive connected to the ata directly, could it be the motherboard thats messed up thats causing all this, or u cant just guess this? thnx again guys