DVD drive problem

Harvey here,
Here's my problem. I have a Toshiba DvD-Rom drive that I bought about 2 years ago. And now it no longer reads Dvd. Well, very rarely... I ran a troubleshooter test on it and it suggested that my problem might be that my DMA was not enabled on it. What the heck, What do I know!!. Just last night I decided to install a new software on my conputer for burning CDs. Nero 6 Ultra Edition. It has a button for system info on it. So I ran it. And guess what?? It showed that the DMA was not enabled on my Toshiba DVD drive.
Now, my question is this: How do I enable the DMA on a Toshiba DVD-ROM drive??? Or do I write it off as a lost cause?
My specs are: Windows XP with service pack
512mbs memory
AMD Athlon Thunderbird 1.4GHz


Many Thanks,
FellowGeekers

 

You can enable DMA by doing the following:
Start -> Control Panel -> System -> Hardware -> Device manager
Now look for IDE ATA/ATAPI Controllers.
After you expand that part of the tree, you will be Presented with Primary IDE Channel and Secondary IDE Channel. Double click on which ever your DVD rom is on. Go to Advanced settings. If the DVD rom is Master of its channel then Make sure Device 0 is set to DMA If Available. If its Slave then Device 2.

Now if your DMA is Enable but its in PIO mode, then this should help a bit.
I experience this problem with XP. I had a 40 gig HDD on system, then one day my system started running VERY slow. So after some investigating i find that my Drive has reverted to PIO mode. After some more research i found out why. Windows XP will force a drive into using PIO if it has 6 major errors reading from the drive. To get it back to DMA, uninstall the device, then reboot, then Reinstall the device. That should let it go back to DMA. If it doesn't, well my hackish solution was to simply disconnect the device form computer, reboot, then shut down and reattach it. Worked for me.

Also make sure Chipset Drivers are all up to date.
Hope this helps