| Windows Transfer Mode Failure: A fix for falling back into PIO mode. |
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Windows has an annoying feature that after a certain number of bad reads from a disk it will assign a lower transfer rate to that device.
If this happens enough it can eventually lower it to PIO mode which severely limits the amount of data the hard drive or CD/DVD drive
can send. This can cause Windows to lock up, slow down, DVD playback being jerky, services being highly CPU intensive, buffer
under-run failure while burning CD's and more. The following fix is summarized from an article written by Ninja Duch on bigpond.net. To quote a warning from the article "This solution talks about using DEVICE MANAGER and REGISTRY EDITOR. If you're a n00b and don't know how to load and use them, please reconsider messing with them as they are both powerful apps that can kill your operating system. But... whatever... if you still want to continue..." We fix this issue by forcing Windows to redetect the drive\'s data transfer capability. Open Device Manager Go to... IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers > Primary IDE Channel > Advanced Settings tab IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers > Secondary IDE Channel > Advanced Settings tab Modify both... Transfer Mode = DMA if available Restart the computer If that didn\'t fix it... Open Regedit or some other Registry Editor Go to.. [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\HARDWARE\DEVICEMAP\Scsi\Scsi Port 0] [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\HARDWARE\DEVICEMAP\Scsi\Scsi Port 1] Scsi is just a historical thing, it really refers to IDE. Modify... DMAEnabled = 1 (DWORD value) Go to... [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\{4D36E96A-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}\0001] [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\{4D36E96A-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}\0002] The key 0001 will most of the time refer to IDE2 and the key 0002 will most of the time refer to IDE1. Delete... MasterIdDataCheckSum SlaveIdDataCheckSum Delete... MasterDeviceDetectionTimeout SlaveDeviceDetectionTimeout Create... ResetErrorCountersOnSuccess = 1 (DWORD value) Restart the computer To read the whole article click here. |
| Windows won't open .exe files |
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If the file associations for .exe files have gotten messed up or corrupted it can make using or working on a computer a pain in the neck. This will
also make it difficult to open REGEDIT, or to even import REG files. To get around that, open Task Manager. Click File, then hold down the CTRL key while you click New Task (Run). Once the command prompt window is open you should be able to open regedit and import the registry file listed below. Of course if the .exe files are really messed up this way may not work either. (Other work arounds coming soon). xp_exe_fix.zip Thanks to Doug Knox for making this fix available. |
| Vista Won't Update |
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This can be caused by a number of things, but if you are having trouble updating Windows Vista, especially pre-service packs, then download the
System Update Readiness Tool for Windows Vista. If you are recieving the error 8007000b while trying to update Vista try the following.
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