MS-DOS Compatibility Mode?!?!?!

[HarU 0]

Hello, i have a weird question here. On one of my gaming machines (the good one) im having sort of a problem with the hard drive saying that it is running ms-dos compatibility mode. Im not sure what this means, but in the description it says it will significantly decrease system performance. Here are my specs:

 

Windows ME

Western Digital ATA-66 40 Gig 7200 RPM

Asus A7V

800 mhz Tbird

512 mb Micron pc-133 ram

Asus V7700 Geforce 2 Pro 64 mb DDR

SBLive

 

Whenever i check the performance of the OS to see what the percentage of resources used is, it always says about 76%. I could turn everything off and not be running any programs and it will be around 70% still. I do notice a significant decrease in system performance, but im not quite sure if this is to blame for that. My question is, what exactly is this and how do i fix it? Is this why my performance is kinda shitty? Thanks for your time guys...

 

One other thing, the drive is partitioned into 3 different drives. C, D, and E. All of these partitions have the MS-DOS compatibility thing under the performance description.

[kgeissler 0]

Have you updated the IDE Controller drivers lately? Does your motherboard use the VIA 4-in-1 drivers?

[HarU 0]

Yeah, i use the 4-in-1 drivers. I don't use the ide controllers for my hard drive though. I use the ATA-66/100 controller. I think that may have something to do with it, but im not sure. Thank you for replying. Anyone other suggestions?

[Wolf87 0]

The performance of the whole system decreases. It is due to IDE controller software, DMA desactivated, A drive desactivated and such.

 

First check the motherboard Bios. Many options there can cause this.

[Wolf87 0]

Check Device Manager, Hardware, Ide controllers. Go to the Advanced Settings Tab in both Primary and Secondary Controller. Activate UDMA mode. Reboot.

[HarU 0]

Hmmm, i browsed around the bios for anything having to do with IDE and enabled DMA on the controllers, but i think you guys are still confused. I don't use the IDE controllers for my hard drive. Why would IDE software or drivers be the reason for an error on a drive that runs on the ATA 66/100 controller? Are you sure that its an issue with the IDE controllers, even though i don't use them? Thanks for replying wolf. I could use all the suggestions i can get. Anyone else have any ideas?

[Wolf87 0]

This problem is most often related to a CD-ROM, CD-RW or DVD-ROM linked to a primary or secondary IDE Controller without Direct Memory Addressing (DMA) activated. It can be created also by the removal of A: drive in the Bios.

 

Then Windows switches to a slow 16 bit mode, so called the ms-dos compatibility performance.

 

Only HD rotational speed matters (7200 RPM). Since ATA 66-100 barely improves performance, check if moving the Hard Disk back to the Primary Controller restores the OS to normal full 32 bit performance.

 

To get out of DOS compatibility mode, try these:

 

A) Click on Start, go to Run, and type in Regedit. Make a backup.

Search for the value NoIDE, if it's present. Delete it. Search for the file noide.inf on the installation disc then right-click and choose install. Reboot.

 

Make sure your HD is setup correctly in the BIOS; it should be set to LBA (not Large or Normal) mode.

 

C) Check all HD and CD-ROM jumpers for the Master/Slave setting.

 

D) If the issue persists its a good possibility that either the hard drive is corrupted or Windows is corrupted (Registry corruption). First attempt to reinstall Windows.

 

E) If it fails, use fdisk, format HD. Do not ever use a geometry translator like Ontrack Disk Manager or any other that came on a diskette with the HD. Then reinstall all computer software.

 

Official literature on this problem:

 

http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q130/1/79.ASP

http://www.wdc.com/service/tip_dir/tip0698.html

[HarU 0]

Ahhhh, okay. That was extremely helpful wolf. Thank you very much. I am at work now, but i will try this when i get home, and i will post my results. Thanks again.