How do I check to make sure UDMA66 is enabled and working in WIN ME and if its not how do i turn it on. second when I start my pc my monitor sort of does a degauss type of thing and then resizes image only during boot up when in windows it works fine

Hi, UDMA66 Should be enabled in your BIOS, Win ME will use the drive as such if DMA is enabled for the drive, and the mainboards drivers are correctly installed.

Assuming that you have UDMA 66 Drives and that you are using the 80 wire not the 40 wire IDE cable and that it is plugged into a valid UDMA 66 IDE controller what you can do is enter your "Device Manager" find a listing for SCSI Devices. If you see that than open it and check to see that your Ultra 66 controller chip is listed there. If it is that implies that all is well. To test your throughput I would recomend that you use a web site that preformes various tests to your system some of these test read/write, throughput and burst rate. In general the 66 in ultra 66 refers to burst transfer rate. Some would argue the point but in general UDMA 66 drivers preform faster than UDMA 33 on all reads, writes, cashing and buffering. One such site that I would recomend is http://www.pcpitstop.com/ they also preform online virus scanning. Many shows and writers recomend this site. You can also download benchmarking software. I have used one called Burn-In &Test. When you boot your system check that during post you should see a listing of your hard drive and controller card. This goes by quickly, if you want to read it at human speed press your Pause/Break key. Your transfer mode should be DMA 5. I know that you should see a message screen like that since the Controller Chip imitates a SCSI adapter. For instance when my machine posts my hard drives appear and all 4 of them are listed and other info like UDMA MODE 5, LBA.. The controller handels the rates and timing. If you see DMA 2 then your drive might be using the wrong cable, the drive might not be UDMA 66 capable or the drive could be set at 33 through software. If you suspect this is the case find out what make and model drive you have, go to the appropreate web site and download the manufacturers recomended DMA switching utility. You might want to also download a drive fitness test that should also be available from the same location. Hope that was of value to you??

tHANKS FOR THE HELP BUT WHAT ABOUT MY MONITOR RESIZING WHEN GOING THROUGH THE BOOT PROCESS I HAVE A NEC MULTISYNC 75 SOMONE TOLD ME THAT THE BOOT PROCESS IS IN DOS AND WHILE BOOTING MY MONITOR HAVE A DRIVER TO DISPLAY CORRECTLY....DURING EACH SCREEN OF START UP I.E VIDEO CHECK, ON BOARD DEVICE CHECK THE MONITOR GOES THROUGH AN ACTION LIKE WHEN YOU FIRST TURN IT ON SIMILAR TO A DEGAUSS, THE SCREEN SLIDES FROM RIGHT TO LEFT AND MAKES A SOUND LIKE WHEN YOU FIRST TURN IT ON I HAVE AN IOMAGIC 32 MEG AGP VIDEO CARD WHATS TEH PROBLEM WILL IT EVENTUALLY DAMAGE MY MONITOR