DMA/PIO issues & sloooow DVD burns

I've looked at a couple of other threads on this topic, but didn't find anything that seemed to pertain to my particular configuration, so hopefully some of you can help out. This will be long and rambling, but here's the scoop:

I'm on XP pro on a 2 month old HP Pavilion dv1000 laptop, 1GB RAM, 100GB HD if that is important. DVD is TSSTcorp CD/DVDW TS-L532M, driver is up-to-date according to the check for new driver function in Windows.

I've tried Nero, 1Click Dvd Copy and now DVD Shrink, all with the same slow time problem.

In Nero tools read+burn speeds show up as max, which is 24x, but the last burn I did part of the running dialogue showed it as 2.4x or something similar.

So in various help files and forums I read that DMA might be the issue (not that I know what DMA is!?!). I went to device manager and under IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers I only have these 2 listed:
-Intel(R) 8280 1FB/FBM Ultra ATA Storage Controllers - 266F
-Primary IDE Channel
(There is no secondary channel listed at all, which is always mentioned in help files--unless the Intel is the 2ndary channel?)

So I checked Primary IDE -->Properties-->Adv settings and got this:
-Device 0
-DMA if avail
Current transf mode: ultra DMA mode 5

ok, but under that was:
-device 1
-DMA if avail
-current transfer mode: PIO mode (and I can't change it, no way to edit the text and no drop-down menu--it's fixed)

For the Intel(R) 8280...contoller, in Properties there isn't even a tab for advanced settings, and I can't find any other place to set it to DMA (if that's even possible...).

In Nero Tools the slave DVD drive also shows as 'DMA off'.

On a different forum, someone suggested I uninstall the Primary IDE channel, then reboot and let the system reinstall it automatically, hopefully resetting it to all DMA, but on another site it says don't uninstall the Primary as it's probably the hard drive...Then someone suggested I uninstall the DVD drive in device manager and reboot.

But I'm a bit paranoid about doing something drastic to my computer--as I'm a realative newbie to computer stuff, I realize I could really get myself into deep doodoo without realizing it, so what to do?

Any help is greatly appreciated...And thanks for reading thru all of this!!
m

 

When I was having trouble with that, uninstalling the ide channels didn't help. Try to update your chipset driver. If you don't know what chipset you have, download Everest or Aida32 or something similiar.

And, if you do uninstall the ide stuff, DO NOT unistall the controller. Only channels.

 

Thanks for the ideas.

So theoretically I COULD uninstall the dvd drive and reboot--it will either help or not, and absolutely won't hurt anything at all?

I ask cause this is in the realm of something I can do, whereas chipsets and firmware and flashing are all things I've heard of but have no idea about what they are, how to do anything with them and what can happen if I do it badly and how to recover.

If I do go ahead and uninstall, which do you recommend: thru IDE channels (I only have the Primary Channel) or thru DVD drive (slave)? Or are they the same?

Thanks so much!