My ordeal using a CD-RW in Win XP

My ordeal with using a CD-RW under Windows XP will hopefully help someone with a similar problem and will demonstrate how Windows XP, by trying to be too clever, ends up compromising system stability and reliability.

I bought a Liteon 32x CD-RW on Sept 2002. I installed it in the secondary IDE port as a slave device along with an existing older DVD-ROM master device. Both devices were functioning via DMA mode at the time. I happily burnt CDs for around 4 months, until I started getting an inordinate amount of CD-write errors – write sessions wouldn’t close, closed sessions could’nt be read back, highly distorted audio CDs .. etc ..etc .. needless to say a bunch of coasters and I was extremely frustrated. I tried everything I could think of .. trying different media, changing the IDE cable, flashing the CD-RW drive, updating the cd-writer software .. reading manufacturer FAQs/troubleshooting guide, looking at the web for help, but nothing seemed to solve the problem.

I happened to notice at this time that my DVD-ROM transfer mode had switched to PIO mode all by itself, while the CD-RW was still operating under DMA mode. In its infinite wisdom, Windows XP will set a CD-drive to PIO mode if it encountering certain errors during data transfers operations, amongst other reasons.

http://www.microsoft.com/hwdev/tech/storage/IDE-DMA.asp

Unfortunately, I didn’t pay too much attention to this and decided that my CD-RW had gone bad. I returned the CD-RW to the store for an RMA, only to have it promptly returned back to me.. apparently the supplier and store both tested the drive and it seemed to be working perfectly. I made big fuss about it and got the store to do additional tests which all passed. I had no choice but to pay $28.00 for shipping (between the store and supplier) to get the drive back.

Now I was really desperate. I started searching the web for a last ditch effort before I gave up all hope. Luckily I stumbled across this article that rang a bell !!.. it read :

Note: It is not possible to use PIO modes to control one device on a channel (IDE) and DMA (or Ultra DMA) modes to control the other one. Do not mix devices that don't support DMA with ones that do on the same channel, if you want to use DMA.

http://www.pcguide.com/ref/hdd/if/ide/confTiming-c.html

I rushed home, disconnected my DVD-drive (which Windows XP had changed to PIO mode), installed the CD-writer and voila .. All my CD burning problems disappeared !!

Isn’t it ironic that in order “to ensure system stability” , XP inadvertently ends up making the system unstable .. assuming the above article is correct (seems to be based on my experience), Microsoft should seriously reconsider its policy of downgrading CD drive transfer modes, especially since it’s very likely that drives on the same IDE channel could be set to conflicting transfer modes, i.e., PIO & DMA modes on the same IDE channel. What do you think ??