DVD Burner reading CD's slowly

W

Waffle

Alpha Geek
to save a new thread, on the topic of DVD Writers sorta - for some reason on my PC, any game that is on a CD, instead of a DVD (call of duty, battlefield vietnam...) takes around 3 minutes to open when i double click the shortcut.

Far Cry on the other hand, which is the most demanding game I own, and is on DVD, opens in less than a second.

I have an AOPEN DVD CD Writer Combo. Could this drive be the problem? Like it reads CD's slower than DVD's?

Thanks.
 
Not related to the other thread, so I split it.

How about music CD's? Have you checked the CPU usage in task manager while you're waiting for it to load up?
 
thats a point. takes a while for music cd's to play. i use iTunes and it takes freakin' ages to skip tracks when the cd is in and i am accessing the songs from the cd via itunes. if that made sense.

when i have saved the tracks, it's instant.

probably a dodgy cd lens?
 
I'm interested in B's question regarding CPU usage when you're using your CD/DVD... If it's higher than a few percent, you probably don't have DMA turned on, which seriously cripples system performance while you use that drive.
 
In device manager, double click the IDE channel your DVD drive is on to see it's properties, either Primary or Secondary in most cases. Anyway, there will be a tab with Advanced Settings on it, and that's what you want. You can see if it's in DMA or PIO mode. If you need to change it, you'll probably have to reboot.

DMA is Direct Memory Access. Basically, this eliminates hoops hardware traditionally has to go through, and helps to reduce bottlenecks.
 
so if its in PIO mode, and i change it, will i notice a sudden increase in speed when starting cd's etc, or will it be a minor change that only some one that knows what it does can spot.

ok i'll try that. thanks.
 
You should notice it, but you also have to take into consideration the drive itself. Some drives load faster than others, but it should be faster than what you have right now.
 
ok all done. it's running at DMA, rebooted it, tried a cd. no difference. I have an old CDROM, that'll i'll hook up tomorrow and see if that helps.

thanks.
 
DMA (Direct Memory Allocation) does not improve CD/DVD/HDD speed so much as it improves total system performance. With DMA off, the CPU and system buss are flooded with data from any IDE transaction. When DMA is enabled, the IDE device has direct access to certain memory addresses, which increases the speed of the device. But more importantly, the load on the CPU and system buss is decreased perhaps a hundred-fold. In other words, proper DMA usasge is critical to having an efficient system!
 
combo drives are very unreliable and i must be in a long line of people who think they are a waste of space,get a dvd writer and a dvd drive and then if your having probs i might be able to help, dvd writers are fairly cheap anyway
 
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