Does anybody know how to enable DMA in Windows XP? I've read many of the post and I've done it all. Here's my system specs: ECS K7S5A Pro Motherboard Supports UATA100 Western Digital Ultra ATA100 Hard Drive using a NEW 80-pin IDE Cable 900MHz with 256MB RAM BIOS Detecttion Hard Drive: Ultra ATA100 (currently using PIO Mode) CD-ROM: ATA33 (currently using UDMA Mode 2) PLEXTOR CD-ROM: DMA Mode 2 (Multiword DMA 2) I've uninstalled and reinstalled the primary IDE Channel, changed and toggled with the transfer mode settings, edited the registry by adding the DWORD as EnableUDMA and changing the values corresponding to the channel as followed from this site: http://www.blackmaxpc.com/Guides/Enable_DMA.htm They also had a small file/program that I could use to check whether I'm using DMA or not. And of course, after editing the registry and running that small program, it detected that my primary ide channel was not using DMA. So I'm probably thinking that DMA is disabled in the primary ide channel. But I'm no so sure. So I leave it to the experts to determine what's wrong I've also used Data Lifeguard 10v to enable Ultra ATA100. After going through the procedure, it said that Ultra ATA100 is now disabled on IDE Channel 0. Your hard drive now supports up to Ultra ATA100. As said before, the Motherboard detects that it is Ultra ATA100 capable and does detect Ultra DMA Mode 5 when it detects the hard drive, the cd-roms, and S.M.A.R.T Disk. The Detection as we all know is: Ultra DMA Mode 5, S.M.A.R.T Disk, capable and Status OK So, after all this and still no changes, I read some other posts from a different forum saying that there's a patch needed to be used or installed in order for DMA to be enabled. The patch was called SISIDE.exe. I found that file in driverguide.com. The actual site: http://www2.driverguide.com/uploads/uploads16/24372.html So I downloaded it and ran it. It didn't include a readme file. Thus, I just ran it and it prompted the DOS screen and then disappeared. So it's like nothing really happened and I'm wondering how do I run this file. But anyways, it seems like everything that I've tried to do just won't work. I'm thinking it's the hard drive that's the problem although I haven't tried it on another computer. But my other CD-ROMS are working fine. Likewise, I'll leave to the experts to narrow down the problems. So hopefully someone out there will solve this long-lasting problem of mine.

I made a mistake. The actual site for SISIDE.exe is: http://www2.driverguide.com/uploads/uploads9/10285.html

you must enable DMA support in the bios first

Tell me how to do that.

Try going into Device Manager, to your hard drive controller. Click properties for the primary IDE Channel. On the Advanced Settings page, see if it will let you change the transfer mode to "DMA if available". If it does, then change it and reboot. Go back to the same properties page and see if the Current Transfer Mode field, now says "Ultra DMA Mode. If it does, than it should be working right.

I've done that many times. It doesn't work.