After using my HDD for nearly a year now I just recently noticed that my HDD is only operating in DMA mode-2, when it is supposed to be in Mode-5 ...Is it because of something in windows or is it my IDE cables?

Athlon XP 1800+
384mb DDR
ECS K7S5A Mobo
HDD in question ---> 100GB Western Digital SE(8mb chache)
GF4 Ti4600
SB Audigy
Windows XP Home

It may be you are using a 40 wire IDE cable, you may have CD-ROM and the HD on the same cable, also bad BIOS settings or a Windows setting: HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\{4D36E96A-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}\0000\EnableUDMA66

Well my HDD is Set as Primary Master located on Primary IDE channel, My Cd-RW is located on the Secondary IDE channel as Master. My BIOS has no options to change as far as that goes....must be the IDE cable, I'll buy a new one and see if that helps.

Ahh sometimes you wonder why you do things...My pc is stuck in DMA 2 because I have the incorrect IDE cable, its one of the ATA 33 cables, I must have acidentally left it in my computer when I was trying to fix an older machine for a friend....Oh well perfect opportunity to go buy some rounded cables:grinthumb

ECS K7S5A Win Xp, but DMA seems not to work

I am able to view most DVDs with no trouble. However, I just bought Excel Saga 1-6, and portions do not play smoothly. They sputter along, as though the DMA were not enabled.

I read something about a utility for this motherboard, that was required to properly set up the DMA under Windows Xp, but after downloading the file, all I found were drivers. The disk that came with the mb only supported up to W 98.

I read something about round cables. Are these what I need? When I installed my ATI DVD software, it indicated that only the zip drive's DMA was not enabled, everything else was ok. I do not see how the zip drive could affect DVD playback.

If I need the round cable, do I need for both DVD drive and HD? Further, I have 1 DVD drive hooked up to my USB port, playback on this on works better than on the internal ---> EIDE. But I think it is because of the 8MB cache on this one.

Please help!

Start Menu -> Run -> compmgmt.msc /s

Then System Tools -> Device Manager -> ATA/ATAPI IDE Controller -> Secondary IDE Channel

Then click on the Advanced Settings tab & see if your DVD is set to "DMA If Available".

Sometimes, if you don't istall proper IDE drivers for your chipset, you will not be able to choose "DMA If Available".

DMA is already selected. Pri: mode 5, sec: mode 2.

Lasers could not be the problem, because I have installed a new DVD drive, and still have the problems. Thanks for your help, though.

I read a posting from another forum:

http://forum.ocworkbench.com/ocwbcgi/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=4&t=002018

but there seems to be no answer to the latest question asked, that was 2 years old. Hence, I seek help with you.

In reference to SISIDE.EXE, its URL leads nowhere: page not found. the same for AGP 1.07. I have found SISIDE.EXE; however, it merely unpacks drivers, most of which are sound card files.

IDE driver

AGP Driver

In any that order?

The order doesn't really make a difference.

Extract the IDE drivers & launch the setup.exe ( if there is one ). Otherwise update the drivers for the IDE controller & direct windows to the folder where you extracted the Zip file.

Very strange. I have build five machines using the ECS K7S5A Pro, and I haven't had any problems such as this. I think you are looking at more of a configuration problem rather than a motherboard problem.

Do you mean bios or other configutation?

I am almost certain that the AGP is not enabled, but I must check further.